ZombieChain Comes Alive: Can Ethereum Sidechains Save the Dapps?

To commit an action to the ethereum blockchain, users need to expend gas, a unit of value that's priced in ether, the network's cryptocurrency, and that fluctuates based on how much other people are using the network at any given time.

Not developers have signed up to build dapps on it, but the Loom team is excited about how it advances their ideas and vision.

The idea of a shared sidechain, Duffy believes, has the potential to help gaming dapps achieve scale while making life easier for users and developers alike.

Broadly, sidechains have a long pedigree in cryptocurrencies, going back to Adam Back and other developers' 2014 proposal for bitcoin "Pegged sidechains."

Loom Network took this idea and introduced the concept of "Application-specific sidechains" or "Dappchains." Using Loom's software development kit, developers can build a dedicated sidechain to house their dapp, with ethereum serving as a secure, decentralized base layer.

Developers would have to set up validators to act as the nexus between the sidechain and the ethereum blockchain.

The monthly fees the developers pay will depend on the cost of committing their users' data to ethereum.

Designing decentralized networks involves tradeoffs, and sidechains are no exception.

For that reason, Loom Network has opted to base its sidechains - including ZombieChain - on delegated proof of stake, a consensus algorithm in which the network elects "Validators" to serve in place of miners.

Rather than setting up on the slow and costly ethereum mainnet, or spinning up a new centralized dappchain, they can join ZombieChain.