Sidechains - Crypto Academy / S4W8 - Homework post for pelon53
Hello everybody, Hope you all are fine and in good health!
My this post is a Homework Task assigned by professor @pelon53 which is about In-depth Sidechains
Explain in detail the Sidechains with the use of ZK-Rollups.
The sidechain enables users to interchange their asset with blockchain for this users first lock their assets and the sidechain prepares them alternative assets once the required action is done on sidechain users can get their asset back by the reverse process. This sidechain is responsible for its security and in case of damage main network stays unaffected and can help users to withdraw their original asset.
Use of Sidechain with ZK-Rollups
We know of blockchains having layer 1 and layer 2 the ZK-rollups are meant to solve layer 2 scalability issues of a blockchain. The ZK-rollups or zero-knowledge rollups are built for the second layer of the Ethereum blockchain. It rollup a massive number of transactions in a single transaction hence it saves energy conservation and storage resource by lessening the data stored in each transaction.
All these transactions in bulk carried out under a single transaction are verified using smart contracts. The transaction using ZK-rollups are carried off-chain however recorded on the main network. The transactors are the user who airs and process the transaction whereas relayers are the user who shapes them in a roll-up.
Following are a few benefits of Zk-Rollups
Low transaction cost per transfer.
Speedy transactions.
Decentralized atmosphere.
Minimum data storage.
Explain the Liquid Network side chain
Liquid Network
Launched in October of 2018 Liquid network is created by the Blockstream network. The liquid network serves as a sidechain to the bitcoin blockchain which was developed to fasten the transactions on the bitcoin network in a secure way.
The main bitcoin blockchain where completes its transaction in two minutes the Liquid blockchain does the transaction in two minutes. The sidechain has its native coin called Liquid-BTC. We need to remember the native coin cannot be traded outside the network. The coin is pegged to the original bitcoin hence interchange between two coins is possible.
For having access to the liquid network user must freeze its BTC which in turn gets an equal amount of liquid-BTC coin the process of converting BTC into L-BTC is called peg-in. After which user can facilitate himself with faster transactions with a low gas fee.
As I mentioned it is necessary to freeze BTC to operate a liquid network as this would yield them Liquid-BTC. Hence one such wallet which can help traders to generate the liquid bitcoin is the “Green wallet” which can be seen in picture below although there are other wallets too such as “coins”, “Aqua”, etc.
Lastly, I’ll be discussing the process of switching L-BTC back to BTC it can take 15-35 minutes and the process is called “Peg-out”. The peg-in process requires 102 verifications whereas contrary to this the peg-out process can be completed after 2 liquid verifications.
Describe the steps to connect the Metamask wallet and the Polygon network wallet. Show screenshots.
Firstly search “Polygon wallet” on your chrome browser and select the first option as shown in screenshot below
Once you’ll click on the above showed link you’ll meet the following page here click on the “connect wallet” button shown in the right corner at the top.
Once you’ll click on the “connect wallet” button you’ll be navigated to the following page where you’ll be asked for the wallet you’re aiming to connect with. Since I’m assigned to connect metamask I’ll select that.
Upon selecting metamask there will be a pop-up screen where you’ll be asked to enter your metamask wallet details. In my case, I’ll here enter my metamask wallet password and then click on unlock.
Upon unlocking I’ll be asked to sign the request of connecting polygon wallet with metamask. Here is my case I’ll click on the Sign button.
Once done you’ll be now navigated to the polygon wallet page where you’ll be able to see your metamask wallet connected to the polygon wallet. Here in the picture below you can see in the corner my metamask account being connected to polygon wallet.
According to the polygonscan block explorer, when will the block 25,000,000 be generated? Show screenshot. Explore the 12,000,000 blocks, at that time, what was the price of the Matic? Show screenshots.
For performing the asked task I first went to Polygonscan. Here you can see a search bar where you can enter the desired hash or token or block or address to explore the data you’re interested in.
Since I’m first told to find out when the 250000000 blocks will be formed hence I searched that number on the search bar.
Upon searching I got the following data it can be seen the 25000000 will form after 107 days which will be on Feb 15 of 2022.
Apart from this few other data can also be seen such as exactly the hours and seconds left for 25000000 block formation.
Also, the current block which is at the time of writing is 20782269 and the number of blocks remaining information of 25000000 blocks is 4217731.
Now in the second part of the question I was asked to find out the Matic price at the time of formation of the 12000000 block hence now, I’ll be searching this number in the search bar as can be seen in the screenshot below:
Upon searching I got all the relevant data at the time of formation of the 12000000 blocks.
Since I was mainly asked Matic price at that time therefore I’ll be first writing that from the data given.
It can be seen in the picture below matic price at that time was $0.38.
However, there are some other data given too such as timestamp i.e. when exactly this block was formed which according to the data given was on March 14 of 2021 which was 230 days ago. Apart from this, the hash which validated the block can also be seen.
Other data such as block reward and gas used and its limit can also be seen in the picture above.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to list the things I learned from this task that is information on the sidechain and their use with ZK-rollups.
After that, this task gave me chance to dig into the Liquid network which is the first-ever sidechain of the bitcoin network. After that, I demonstrated the steps of connecting the polygon wallet with the metamask one.
Lastly, I was given a chance to use polygon explorer which surely amused me with the level of information it holds. I wasn’t expecting the prediction of block generation on any explorer but then again this crypto season has taught me so much more about the crypto world I wasn’t aware of.
Lastly, I would like to thank the professor for this easy yet interesting homework task as I wouldn’t have known things unless I was assigned to.