Never saw this newly-popular crypto coming, but then watched the Hodge Twins declare they sold most of their "bit-CONE" and had to watch it...

logo first, Hodge Twins next, analysis to follow, and conclusion:

We'd heard of ALL of the "cones" they mentioned except one: Silly-ca
We didn't even know how to spell it after they said it. So what is (correct spelling) Zilliqa?

Let's start with the fun stuff:
Zilliqa started off trading life in February (2018), volatile as hell, trading between 4 cents and 10 cents. It was glued to 4 cents for almost 2 full months before it "mooned" to 20 cents on May 10, 2018. It's coming off that mooning, and now trades for around 11-12 cents per "cone". Since there are a whopping 6.6 BILLION coins (compare to bitcoin's 80mm) this means Zilliqa trades for a rather spiffy $800 mm valuation or so-- that's a lot of cheddar for a new coin. Zilliqa is the absolute #1 top performer in altcoins right now, at least over the last 90 days or so, when you compare it to other large-market-cap coins. We think this is why the mighty Hodge Twins are all up in all KINDS of those gains. But don't let their acting fool you, these twins are SMRT smart, so there's bound to be a better reason they are in Zilliqa beyond just the recent gains and popularity. They strike me as a pair to at least do the cursory research required to separate the truly absurd crypto-nonsense from the well-constructed cryptos, so let's delve into the Zilliqa story a bit...

WHAT'S THE STORY with ZILLIQA?

We like one-sentence teasers, so we'll give you ours...

Zilliqa: the Asian Ethereum but with 1,000x the transaction rate

Wait, here's another...

Zilliqa: It's Singaporean for Ether!!

Zilliqa's mission is to provide a crypto-platform in the same light as Ethereum, but claims to have a better mousetrap wrt transactions rate. They claim Ethereum is hampered-- processing less than 10 transactions per second; on the flip side, they claim Zilliqa will be able to process 1,000 times that rate with the same amount of miners (transaction verifiers) as Ethereum has today. Zilliqa's new "mousetrap" (vs Ethereum) is called "SHARDING". Yey! Sharding is geek-speak for dividing the transaction-verification work into smaller groups ("shards") which can process the transactions in parallel. We'll simplify this for you. All 30,000 Ethereum miners must communicate with each other when processing a block of transactions, and come to a "Byzantine Consensus" (voting). Zilliqa, by contrast, would break that block of transactions down into many pieces, and divide the miners up into separate voting groups. If you want to visualize it, think of Ethereum as running a political election and voting on the President (Main Block) only; whereas, Zilliqa's miners are divided into 50 states and each state votes on a Senator. When consensus is reached on each Senator in the 50 states, those consensus "Senators" are then sent to "Washington" and combine together to form the President (Main Block). Now you can go and read Zilliqa's white paper and get all geeked-out on how it REALLY works, but we promise you our simplification is going to do the job for most of you. If this sounds incredibly obvious, it sort of is. But remember, Ethereum is much much bigger and already has a bunch of crypto-platforms which run on it, AND AND AND there have been multiple solutions proposed to increase the transaction processing rate and some of those have been in the works for quite some time. We already wrote about one, called the Raiden Network which you can read about (or rehash if you follow us) here... https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@harpooninvestor/hot-crypto-of-2018-the-raiden-network See, we know where the "juice" is in crypto-currency, we picked out Raiden Network as an important topic back 4 months ago. (It wasn't hard, like Zilliqa its price was hot hot hot).

Opinion: Zilliqa is a waste of time and effort

We respect that transaction rate is important, all you need to know to understand that is look at the week-long waits traders had to get confirmations (in stocks and real estate this is called "settlement") in December when crypto-currencies were all the rage. Who wants to wait a week to find out if those bitcoins you sold for $19,000 per bitcoin actually went thru, or whether you'll have to try again now that bitcoin is $14,000? That could be quite harrowing, no?

Bitcoin is getting around this using the (internal solution) Lightning Network (LN) and Ethereum has its solutions including Raiden Network (external private solution). We simply think the world just doesn't need another crypto-currency PLATFORM which offers yet another solution (even tho Zilliqa's is from the ground-up) with an extra bell or whistle. Do you know how many cryptocurrency platforms have emerged since the popularity of Ethereum? It's almost mind-numbing. Each COUNTRY now seems to have their favorite, in addition to all the competing bells and whistles of each one claiming they are better than the rest. YAWN. Know what to do? Sit on your hands, and watch. If you absolutely NEED NEED NEED to own a crypto-currency PLATFORM, then own some Ethereum and HODL it until you see something change for the obvious. What do we mean by "change"? We mean, watch Ethereum and NEM and LISK and Zilliqa and all the other "platforms" and see whether ANY of them can give birth to a crypto-application which actually works and begins having a certain level of success and meaningfulness. For instance, Steemians, your very own Steemit is closely associated with BitShares, another platform, and the founder of Steemit left and formed yet ANOTHER platform called EOS. Just watch them, and see if any of these "platforms" become platforms for anything. Of course, a platform actually becoming a platform doesn't guarantee success, not in crypto anyway. If you can get a platform in the REAL software world, like iOS or Android, then you can make some serious money (go look at Apple's App-store revenues and growth and profitability if you're bored some day). But a successful platform in crypto-currency, over the long term? Well, let's just say the jury is out on that one, but if something good happens you'd want to be in the platform crypto which is actually having success as a platform. We have a long way to go before that happens. Just check out this guy's (Jamie McKane) article about the "top 5" things built on Ethereum...
https://mybroadband.co.za/news/software/219266-the-5-coolest-experimental-apps-built-on-ethereum.html
We don't argue he's ranked them properly, but let's quickly examine his candidates:

Raiden Network

This isn't really an application on Ethereum, so much as a PATCH of a problem with Ethereum. NEXT.

Etheria

It's a game similar to Minecraft but on blockchain. Hmmm. We know lots of kids who play Minecraft; know any who play Etheria? Keep watching this one, but NEXT.

TenX

They let you spend Ether from your Ether wallet, but using a Visa or Mastercard credit card! Guess what, there's going to be plenty of fees on this, so why bother? Isn't the point of cryptocurrencies to offer an alternative way of transacting from fiat? If you're going to pay fiat-accepting stores with Ethereum, this is self-defeating, and in fact, would only serve to push down the price of Ether if people actually started using it. Are you using it? If so, WHY? We're quite sure you can convert Ethereum to fiat MUCH cheaper than TenX will allow. NEXT.

EtherTweet

Ok, this one seems quite easy to understand. Twitter is free tho. Even messages in Steemit cost a little bit of Steem.
Ether Twitter is going to charge you to send stuff, whilst Twitter is not only free but has a giant network of people on it.
Watch this one, but in all honesty... NEXT.

Gnosis

Ok, now THIS one is interesting even if it's already competing with a dozen or more other applications all trying to do the same concept of "prediction markets". Know what a prediction market means? Like a sportsbook, where you bet on the Houston Rockets to win the NBA Championship in the pre-season for 16:1 odds. But this one is largely intriguing bc it's mostly illegal in 1st world nations like the US. If prediction markets were entirely legal, they would already be giant right now, and the only way crypto would be able to compete is on the price of commissions. Crypto really doesn't do ANYTHING which could radically improve online sportsbooks (again, other than undercut price). In fact, many up-and-coming crypto-sportsbooks (like Wagerr is one, off the top of our head, Bookie is another, PeerPlays) are promising just that-- cheaper prices/commissions. YEY! Assuming cheaper prices worked, the established sportsbooks would be forced to cut prices. It'd be a bloodbath for awhile. But Gnosis, again, is mostly interesting bc they could theoretically break the law in the US and accept anonymous US customers. Hmmm, THAT would sure piss off a bunch of very powerful businessmen with close ties to US politicians, wouldn't it? Have you read up on your Sheldon Adelson or Steve Wynn? They don't take kindly to competition, just ask the Bush Family, who in 2006 crushed a fast-growing online poker and sportsbook market simply to prevent American casinos from having any competition. Watch Gnosis and it's dozen prediction markets and cryptobook competitors to see if any emerge strong, but...... NEXT.

A GENERAL COMMENT FOR YOU "BUT IT'S THE BLOCKCHAIN THAT's IMPORTANT" GENERALS:

So we wait for the storied unicorn of a "technology" known as "blockchain" to actually do something technological. We don't see it, and we've delved pretty deep into how blockchain works. Blockchain's cleverest "innovation" is the Byzantine voting system, which allows Decentralization. Think of Decentralization, anytime you see it written by the tech geeks pushing it as some awesome new technology, as "driverless politics". Now to us, that sounds ideal. But go read up on how hard it has been to change anything about Bitcoin from it's original iteration (look up Bitcoin vs Bitcoin Cash for instance) and it'll give you some ideas as to how an Algorithm might govern.

Turn-offs:

1. We hate "jargon"
While it's cute sometimes, when a technology entity (or one claiming to be technological) resorts to using a bunch of buzzwords they know laymen don't understand, it's a red flag for us. SHARDING? Please.
Another example is just about everything in the whitepaper, and even their FAQ section has gobbledygoop only a high-tech programmer would understand. Here's an example when Zilliqa's website tries to answer the FAQ "What is the language going to look like?"

Unlike in Ethereum, ZILLIQA’s smart contract language won’t be Turing complete. The computation model will be based on communicating I/O automata (I/O Automata theory by Lynch and Tuttle’881 with CPS style return of values. The front-end language can be close to Solidity. The rationale behind the choice is the following: not all applications require a Turing complete language. Moreover, Turing complete languages are hard to reason about and hence prone to bugs. A non Turing-complete language becomes amenable to formal methods-based verification because of its simplicity . In more concrete terms, it becomes possible to prove interesting safety and liveness properties about a non-Turing complete program such as the funds never get locked, etc.

YAWN.

2. Unrecognizable Founders
We've never heard of ANY of these people, and we got bored looking them up after the CEO...

Who is Zilliqa?

CEO Xinshu Dong is damn near a career student, and a recent one at that. Dong graduated Bachelors of Software Engineering from East China Normal University in 2008, and then achieving a Doctorate of Philosophy and Computer Science in 2013, Dong didn't finish his studies until just a few years ago. Dong was a researcher for Advanced Digital Sciences Center for 3 years, and then Dong joined Anquan Capital for 6 months while developing Zilliqa, Dong did. (and despite our tongue-in-cheek love of writing Dong in context, we LOVE almost everything about Singapore, by the way)

CONCLUSION: YAWN

We say pass on Zilliqa as a long-term HODL. Stick to Bitcoin, and if you need to really own a "platform", probably best to stick to Ethereum or the Hobson Twins' favorite, Eos (which is sorta the "outlaw" Ethereum), until something truly takes their place. Sit on your hands and watch Zilliqa. It goes up, it goes down, but ultimately, if it ended up taking over the world, you'd have PLENTY of time to buy the Ethereum of Singapore before it got down moving up.

we'd do more in-depth research on Zilliqa if it merited it. But sometimes if you have enough experience, you simply need to know the GIST of something, and then just watch and see if your conclusion is challenged. No challenge? No problem, you're not stuck invested. Cash is a good place to be these days.

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NOTES

Exchanges:
Binance, Kucoin and Bithumb make Zilliqa a somewhat respected coin amongst traders-- off the bat; but, these exchanges are mainly the newest leaders in crypto exchanges. BitFlyer and Coinbase (GDAX) still have the New York BitLicenses, so you haven't REALLY made it until you're on one of those 'white-shoe' exchanges, but Binance is a good start. If it's not on Bittrex or Poloniex or Kraken tho (old stalwarts of the "middle era" of crypto exchanges), we suspect Zilliqa has made some special "arrangements" (read PROMOTION) with Binance and Kucoin. This is a small red flag of course. These days, breadth of exchange is generally a good sign.