Sidechains - Crypto Academy / S4W8 - Homework post for pelon53.

QUESTION 1

Explain in detail the Sidechains with the use of ZK-Rollups.

Blockchain technology has been one of the technologies that have been accepted rapidly. The mass acceptance of blockchain technology has caused these blockchains to have challenges relating to scalability. This refers to how fast transactions can be carried out on the blockchain and hence the need for a technology to solve this issue.
Sidechains are therefore alternative technologies or chains that are designed to help improve upon the scalability of these blockchains by allowing transactions to be carried out on it which is later sent to the main chain or blockchain for verification and storage.
For instance I run a transport business where I send people to their destinations using a two seater car. People now patronize my company such that I get too many customers so transporting them with my two seater car will mean that some of them will be late. I then decide to get a new bus which can send much more people at the same time. Using the bus I will be able to send a lot of people to their destinations without making others late all in the name of my company. In his case the bus is my sidechain through which I made things very fast and convenient.
An example of a sidechain is the ZK-rollups. ZK-rollups is a sidechain that carries out numerous transfers off chain and rolls it up into a single transaction and generates a proof of validity which is a cryptographic proof known as succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge (SNARK) which is then sent to the main chain or blockchain. ZK-rollups makes use of proof of validity either than transaction data so things are made faster and and cheaper on this sidechain. It has the security of the main chain since its proof of validity is sent to the main chain.

QUESTION 2

Explain the Liquid Network side chain

Liquid Network sidechain is a Bitcoin sidechain that was introdiuced in September 2018 by blockstream in order to make Bitcoin transaction faster and more confidential by producing its blocks which is pretty much faster than the main Bitcoin blockchain. It usesa token called L-BTC in transacting which is pegged 1 L-BTC is to 1 BTC and this sidechain used a federation of selected nodes instead of proof of work mining. Transaction on exchanges or brokers using this sidechain is faster because it is designed to have a minute interval between its blocks as compared to the 10 minute interval in the Bitcoin blockchain.
In order to get your BTC into this sidechain you send it to your sidechain address and then the asset is frozen in the main Bitcoin blockchain and then your sidechain wallet is accredited. With this the amount of L-BTC in circulation on the sidechain is equal to the frozen BTC on the main Bitcoin blockchain. The following are some of the advantages associated with the liquid network sidechain.

• Faster transaction; transferring assets on the liquid network is faster because transactions are verified after two confirmations which happens with a minute which is much faster than the Bitcoin network.
• Increased confidentiality : there is more confidentiality on the liquid network sidechain because tokens types, amount sent or received are made unknown to any third party on the network which makes very secure to use.
• Secure trading; liquid network offers a feature known as Liquid Swaps Tool where a user can swap his or her tokens for differently tokens safely.

QUESTION 3

Describe the steps to connect the Metamask wallet and the Polygon network wallet. Show screenshots.

• Click on the three bars displayed on the top left part of the screen.

• Click on settings

• Click on networks

• Click on add network

• Enter the following details ;

Network Name: Polygon Mainnet
New RPC URL: https://rpc-mainnet.maticvigil.com/
Chain ID: 137
Currency Symbol (optional): MATIC
Block Explorer URL (optional): https://explorer.matic.network/

Once you enter all these details click on “save”.

You add done connecting the polygon network to the metamask under the name MATIC MAINNET.

QUESTION 4

According to the polygonscan block explorer, when will the block 25,000,000 be generated? Show screenshot. Explore the 12,000,000 block, at that time, what was the price of the Matic? Show screenshots.

In order to find out when the 25,000,000 block will be generated i searched for the said block and found out that block 25,000,000 will be generated in 116 days 6 hours 30 minutes 12 seconds. this time was taken as at the time i was performing this assignment

i continued by searching for block 12,000,000 and found the following details.
block 12,000,000 was generated on 14th march, 2021 and had a block reward of 0.00877199352 MATIC.
the price of MATIC is $1.83

CONCLSION
I am without doubt blockchain technology will surely take over the world. blockchain has had significant growth in the past years. it also has major drawbacks that needs to be looked up before the complete takeover in the world. one of the major problems is scalability but with the introduction of sidechains i personally think that the more these sidechains are being used the more improved scalability we get. thnks to professor @pelon53 for such a lecture.