The stories are beginning to add up. As current stakers of Zilliqa are beginning to realize there is something afoot. You need to read this to insure that you Don't Miss Out, It's Time to Stake Zilliqa.
What is Zilliqa?
Zilliqa has been around since 2017 and has focused on increased the speed and throughput of the networks. According to the project they can increase the speed of transactions a thousand times more than any of the larger and bigger blockchains.
Zilliqa predominantly relies on the technique of sharding where transactions are bundled as they are sent to the miners for parallel consensus.
This approach has the ability to increase and grow with more involvement in the network at variable rates.
In addition, Zilliqa can be staked by the user across several platforms including; Atomic Wallet, Zillacracy, and the Moonlet wallet.
Zilliqa is growing and developing capability and functionality which is really exciting.
What is even more exciting at least for the very near future is the lesser talked about feature of the Zilliqa governance token $gZIL.
A Conversation Among Colleagues
A small group of us were discussing the best ways and platforms to use for staking Zilliqa. Just the day before I had noticed a new and intriguing token that had appeared in my Atomic Wallet.
At first I was perplexed as I had never heard of $gZIL and saw that it was trading around $80 USD. I just figured that it was some random airdrop that I had put in for a millennia ago and carried on about my day.
Some time later I took a moment and did some sleuthing on what $gZIL was and where it had come from. To my surprise it was received from staking $ZIL. Now I had to learn more.
My colleagues had not seen it before either so we all embarked on this journey together which led us to two very important questions.
2 Important Questions about $gZIL
- What is Governance $ZIL ($gZIL)?
- How do I earn it and what can I use it for?
The best source that I can find for the answers to these questions is the Zilliqa FAQ page which has even more content on a variety of subjects, but what I found on $gZIL was exciting! $gZIL are ZRC-2 compliant fungible tokens that can be earned alongside $ZIL staking rewards. $gZIL will only be issued when a user withdraws his/her $ZIL stakings rewards from his/her designated SSN operator. For every 1,000 $ZIL earned as staking reward, 1 gZIL will be issued (i.e. 0.001 $gZIL will be issued for every 1 $ZIL staking reward).
The rationale behind issuing $gZIL is to capture long-term token holders and give them access to governance tokens that they can later use to make ecosystem-wide decisions (e.g. in a DAO like structure where $gZIL holders can vote and make decisions on community projects).
Aside from holding $gZIL for governance purposes, users can also swap $gZIL for other ZRC-2 tokens on our DEX, ZilSwap, or contribute to its liquidity pool(s) in return for rewards.
$gZIL will only be issued for 1 year starting from the launch of non-custodial $ZIL staking (14 October 2020), with the objective of creating scarcity and to incentivise users to get involved in the staking programme early. Furthermore, we limit the maximum number of $gZIL ever to be issued at 722,700.
Parting Thoughts
As with most developments in the crypto space there is always more that remains to be seen. For example, what are the types of governance engaging topics and decisions that $gZIL will be the ticket to participate with? How will it be used, etc?
Great as those would be to answer right now, I'm comfortable in the fact that we can figure it out as we all move forward.
I think the most important point right now is that if you have yet to stake your $ZIL, then you better get to it. I couldn't find how many governance tokens remained to be minted but I can't imagine that they will be after the near term.
The highlights are that:
- $gZIL became available in October 2020
- Only 772,700 will be minted in total
- Your staking claim and restaking strategy is important.
As to the third bullet above there is an informative publication that was put out by CoinDeskNepal on the frequency that could most benefit your situation.
In the article there are 3 different levels which are compared, 10,000 ZIL, 100k ZIL and 1 Million ZIL. Also it should be highlighted that at the time the article was written most staking returns were nearly 24% where as today the returns are much closer to 16%
Even with those slight differences you can see how the numbers play out. The added benefit is that these staking return charts do not include the $gZIL additions which is a welcomed surprise.
So after all of this, if you're staking, Great Job! If you still have a few things to do, then you know what is waiting for you, Good Luck!
