Sidechains - Crypto Academy / S4W8 - Homework post for pelon53
Hello, Steemit
1.- Explain in detail the Sidechains with the use of ZK-Rollups.
Blockchain is the world's next big thing, and it cannot be overemphasized. Its impact and innovation currently are opening the eyes of men every day. It still shocks some people how the blockchain came into existence. It is a decentralized platform that takes away every form of third from the control of your asset. It is also used for transactions and store useful information in form of a ledger. Being wonderful does not make it good, it has some set back that might make it fail if not properly looked into. Some issues like scalability, speed, and security can damage this wonderful idea called the blockchain. Further thoughts were brought into the system that led to the birth of another great idea called the sidechain.
So what is the Sidechain? Sidechains are different blockchains or even separate blockchain which behaves like an extension or an attachment to the parent blockchain to solve some issues that the parent blockchain cannot handle. The sidechain supports the blockchain to carry some loads. The loads may include the speed, scalability, and even efficiency of the blockchain. With a sidechain, it became very possible for one to transfer a token from one blockchain to another and you can also transfer the token back to its parent blockchain. In the making of a sidechain, an off-chain process is involved.
So does Sidechain work with ZK-Rollups?
There have been issues like scalability, data consumption, and loss of files already existing, the ZK-rollups came to solve that issue when it was integrated into the sidechain of a blockchain. ZK-Rooups achieved high scalability by mass transfer which is processed in a single transaction. Which has not happened before. The smart contract in the ZK-rollups helps to verify all the transfers which were done in a single transaction.
ZK stands for “zero-knowledge proof”. Another issue that the ZK- rollups help the sidechain to tackle, is the reduction of the amount of data that is used in the transaction by reducing the computing and storage resources that are used for validating the blocks.
The ZK-rollups are made up of two schemes; which are the Transactors and the Relayers.
The Transactors is the part that does the transfer and also broadcast the transfer to the network. The transactor transfer data always have the following; to and from address, nonce, amount to be transferred, and the network fee. Merkle Trees records the data in the smart contract in two ways; all the addresses are being recorded in one Markle tree and the other Markle tree has to transfer amount
The relayer is the part that holds a large number of series transfers and creates a rollup for it. The relayers also are responsible for the generation of the SNARK proof. The SNARK proof provides a hash that makes each transaction special.
Zk-rollups is used in the sidechain have helped to decrease the fee per transfer because the transfer is done in bulk and data consumption has been drastically reduced.
2.- Explain the Liquid Network side chain
The creation of Liquid Network has brought a whole new competition with the already existing lighting network in the Bitcoin space, the liquid network which was launched on September 27, 2018, at exactly 1:29 UTC by the Blockstream. The liquid network is a type of Bitcoin sidechain which is built on the Bitcoin blockchain which aims at offering a fast transaction, increasing the scalability and also the cost of transaction volume. Because it is built on bitcoin Blockchain, it uses Liquid bitcoin (L-BTC) as its token.
With a Liquid network, you can move Bitcoin from one network to another with a two-way peg. The liquid network is mostly carried out by its members which may include and large exchanges and financial institutions. Strong Federation is the approach that Liquid network uses to reach consensus. A strong federation is simply, taking out the individual proof of work mechanisms and putting the entire actions of a team mutually distrusting participants. The Liquid network functions in two ways. The Blocksigner and the watchman
Blocksigner; The fact that blocks are generators every minute, what the block signer does is to keep a record of the block height including the signed block and the refuse to sign blocks. Blocksigner helps also to organize blocks once they are created
Watchmen: The serves as security to transactions movement, be it to and fro movement. It works in two paths which are the Peg-in and the Peg-out. Whenever funds move from Bitcoin to a liquid network, it is called the peg-in. While Peg-out is in charge of all movement of funds from the liquid to the bitcoin blockchain.
Some advantages of the liquid network includes
- With liquid network, you can carryout instant transfers between wallets, market makers etc
- There is high security network for all your transaction
- Decentralization is being achieved using the Liquid network
- WIth Liquid network, you can move large amounts from one market to another.
Disadvantage
- Bitcoin miners reward are being reduce when large volume of bitcoin is transfer.
3.- Describe the steps to connect the Metamask wallet and the Polygon network wallet. Show screenshots.
These are the steps needed to take for you to connect your Metamask to the Polygon Wallet.
- Install Metamask on your device, mine is already on my laptop
- On the metamask app
- Mine is currently set on Telos Testnet
- I clicked on the dialogue box at the top center of the app
- It brought down list of network
- And I could not find the Polygon network
- So I selected the Custom RPC
- A different window was opened, asking me to fill in the spaces that were provided for me.
- I quickly went to the internet and searched, and all the information I needed was provided. The information can be seen below. I fill in the boxes with the information below.
- After filling in the information correctly, I pressed save.
- The next dialogue took me directly to the Polygon network and as you can see I have 0 MATIC.
Network Name: Polygon Mainnet
New RPC URL: https://rpc-mainnet.maticvigil.com/
ChainID: 137
Symbol: MATIC
Block Explorer URL: https://explorer.matic.network/
4.- According to the polygonscan block explorer, when will block 25,000,000 be generated? Show screenshot. Explore block 12,000,000, at that time What was the price of the Matic? Show screenshots.
For the two questions, I will be getting my answer from this site https://polygonscan.com/
EXPLORING BLOCK 25,000,000
- I entered this site https://polygonscan.com/ on my device
- I searched for the Block by typing 25000000 and pressed search
- The date that the block will be generated quickly appeared which is
- You can see the screenshot below, arrange in orderly manner.
- You can also see that the current number of Block is #20701140 and the remaining Block is #4298860
114 days 10 hours 29mins 03secs with the estimated date of Saturday Feb 19 2022 22:55:40 GMT+0100 (West African Standard)
EXPLORING 12,000,000 bblock on Polygon
- I entered this site https://polygonscan.com/ on my device
- I searched for the Block by typing 12000000 and pressed search
- The date that the block will be generated quickly appeared which is
- You can see the screenshot below, arrange in an orderly manner.
228 days 1 hours(Mar-14-2021 09:35:48 AM +UTC)
Transactions: 14 transactions and 0 contract
internal transaction in this block
Validated by:
0x7fcd58c2d53d980b247f1612fdba93e9a76193e6 in 6 secs
Block Reward: 0.00877199352 MATIC
- The price of the MATIC is at $0.38/MATIC
The addition of sidechains has helped to solve a lot of issues in the crypto world that the Blockchain could not have solved. Starting from Scalability to speed to how Effective the Blockchain suppose to be. Even sending large transfers in a single transaction was all achieved by the sidechain. Both the ZK-rollups and the liquidity network are wonderful sidechains that everyone would use.
I also understand how to link polygon to the Metamask app and knowing that some blocks are yet to come and some have come already, this can be achieved by going to their site. I have learned a lot today.
Cc: @pelon53