Review on Zilliqa by Tran Tinh

Name: Zilliqa
Item: Zilliqa
Rating: 4

September 18, 2018

The language adopts certain design principles to make contracts tractable and…

The language adopts certain design principles to make contracts tractable and hence easier to reason about:
Separation between computation and communication:  Every in-contract computation (e.g., changing its balance or computing a value of a function) is implemented as a standalone, atomic transition, i.e., without involving any other parties. Whenever such involvement is required (e.g., for transferring control to another party), a transition would end, with an explicit communication, by means of sending and receiving messages. 
Separation between effectful and pure computations: Any in-contract computation happening within a transition has to terminate, and have a predictable effect on the state of the contract and the execution. 
Separation between invocation and chained contract calls: The language only allows tail-calls, i.e., every call to an external function (i.e., another contract) has to be done as the absolutely last instruction.
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Pros

Scilla, short for Smart Contract Intermediate-Level Language, is an intermediate-level smart contract language being developed for Zilliqa. Scilla has been designed as a principled language with smart contract safety in mind.

Cons

It’s still being developed: The mainnet launch was supposed to be in the middle of 2018 but it now looks like it won’t be launched before September. It’s almost impossible to tell what kind of real-world value Zilliqa will have until it launches. Only then we will find out what kinds of smart contracts and dApps it can support and at what speeds.