Zilliqa is a new blockchain platform that is designed to securely scale in an open, permissionless distributed network. The core feature that makes Zilliqa scalable is sharding – the division of the network into several smaller component networks capable of processing transactions in parallel. As a result, the transaction rate in Zilliqa increases as the mining network expands. Zilliqa aims to rival traditional centralized payment methods such as VISA and MasterCard. In fact, with a network size of 10,000 nodes, Zilliqa will enable a throughput which matches the average transaction rate of VISA and MasterCard with the advantage of much lower fees for the merchants.