What is lisk Cryptocurrency? Everything you need to know it

8 min readMar 1, 2018

About LISK COIN : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTgAC-XTInI

I know what you’re thinking another cryptocurrency to blow the blockchain system. And yes you’re partially true about that. The reason why i’m writing this blog is to tell you everything and do the fact check of lisk cryptocurrency. So here’s my perspective on lisk and lisk blockchain system, do read till the end before start trading on it.

Four things this blog will cover:

What is Lisk (Foundation)? (WHAT)
Things that make LISK differ from other. (HOW)
Lisk Today
Need of LISK (WHY)

What is Lisk (Foundation)? (WHAT)

Lisk is an open source blockchain platform powered by LSK tokens that will allow developers to write decentralized applications in the JavaScript programming language. Lisk will give developers the ability to build applications on their own sidechain linked to the Lisk network, with their own custom token.
Lisk is currently in the process of its Software Development Kit (SDK), which is what will allow the building of your own personal blockchain. The SDK will use JavaScript to do so. According to Lisk’s website, it will be as easy as Code — Deploy — Use. The dApps built on the Lisk network will run in individual sidechains so as not to compromise the overall Lisk network and its scalability.
Blockchain networks that are built off of the Lisk network will have full use of the Lisk APIs but will also be fully customizable.
Lisk’s roadmap is split into five stages: Inception, Resilience, Expansion, Ascent, and Eternity. Specifically, Lisk’s rebranding, which is included in this stage of the roadmap.

Things that make LISK differ from other. (HOW)

One of the biggest problems with other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum is scalability. Because the Lisk platform is implementing a sidechain for each application developed on it, it is far easier to scale with much less bloat. Since applications are being developed on sidechains if something goes wrong on another applications blockchain it won’t force Lisk to have a hardfork because it won’t affect the Lisk blockchain. Sidechains also mean more security and faster application for application developers. Another thing that makes Lisk special is the fact that it is an open source platform. There are currently 29 contributors to the Lisk project and it is ranked as one of the best cryptocurrencies by actual developers. You can check out their GitHub for a peak of what’s currently being worked on and what’s next: https://github.com/LiskHQ/lisk.

Lisk Today

Lisk is currently the 14th largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $3.7 billion. LSK is selling for $31.59 at the time of writing, which puts the token up 11.33% in the past 24 hours; excitement is mounting in the days leading up to the re-launch.
Since first launching early in 2016, Lisk has grown 1448.5% and is still steadily growing in popularity. There are several upcoming ICOs that are being launched on the Lisk platform, including Sapien.
Does Lisk interest you? If the re-launch is successful, this might be the altcoin to watch in 2018.

Need of LISK (WHY)

It is a ‘modular’ cryptocurrency

The first of its kind, Lisk brands itself as the “first modular cryptocurrency utilising sidechains”. We’ll get to the sidechains part in a bit and focus on ‘modular’. As the name suggests, this coin involves ‘modules’ that serve as the basis of its design and construction. The overall design is its trump card — the Lisk system allows anyone to use its ‘designing blocks’ to construct their own decentralised apps . The language of choice for Lisk for individual app construction is Javascript, one of the most popular programming languages. Loads of programmers know Javascript, so we can say that the applicability value of Lisk is quite high.

Utilises ‘sidechains’

By this point, we are all familiar with the blockchain, usually defined as public ledger of all completed transactions. One problem that exists with blockchains is that it can be artificially bloated with test or fake transactions. When there are too many bad transactions, the ‘blocks’ get full faster and slow down the network (this is called ‘bloated’ network). No one likes a slow network.

Enter Lisk’s solution, the sidechain. Sidechains are additions to the main blockchain. Think of it like Post-It notes applied on book pages — you can add more value yet not clutter the main text. Sidechains can be attached to independent blockchains and serve as a place to put all the high-volume transactions without interfering with the main blockchain. As a result, this will ensure a fast network all day, every day (in theory). You can read more about sidechains in the whitepaper or Richard Brown’s simple explanation.

One of the Most Successful Cryptocurrency Crowdsale (What Global Say)

From February to March 20116, Lisk crowdfunded 14,052 bitcoins, or about US$9.76 million (as of current bitcoin price at the time of writing). That is a lot of money. It was the fourth-highest crowdfund for any cryptocurrency, ever.

To be fair, it does pale in comparison against the #1 spot The DAO kind of overshadowed Lisk with a ridiculous US$164 million raised.

As a Developer Tool, It Works as Advertised (But Small Sample Size)

How does a decentralised app (again, ‘dapps’) look like? The potential of the Lisk network, with its modular cryptocurrency and utilising sidechains is what Lisk is trying to show. In its main page, Lisk showcases some examples: Criterion (Concept; Proof of Existence), Dust (Concept; Decentralised Trust on Lisk), Discovr (Concept; A social network for artists), MarketPlace (Prototype; A Decentralised Store on Lisk) and BlockData (Prototype; Smart Home on Lisk).

BIG COMPARISON — LISK vs ETHER

Many comparison has been made between Lisk and Ethereum. However, CEO Kordek maintains that Lisk is ‘not competitor to Ethereum’.

All in all, the Lisk ecosystem look great from the developer/programmer point of view. How about for investors? As of 16 June 2016, Lisk has the following statistics on CoinGecko’s home page:

Currently ranking 8 on CoinGecko’s overall ranking, Lisk also ranks as an altcoin with the 14th largest community and 13th most active development. As Lisk continues its momentum in the future, it will be interesting to note the improvement on Lisk’s rank on CoinGecko.

Research-wise, Lisk has a higher ‘knowledge’ entry barrier for non-coders, so to fully understand and appreciate how it works, a background in programming won’t hurt. Like other altcoins, Lisk is also not immune to volatility. Since this cryptocurrency is very new, only time will tell if Lisk has what it takes to take off among mainstream Javascript coders, but there are certainly positive signals that they are heading in the right direction.

To wrap up, below is an infographic made by Kordek to show differences between Lisk and Ether.

You can learn more about Lisk with these resources.

Differences from Ethereum

Lisk and Ethereum both try to provide a platform for a similar idea: Decentralized Applications (Lisk calls them Blockchain Applications)

Applications language: Lisk uses Javascript, while Ethereum currently uses Solidity.
Applications location: Lisk uses sidechains, while Ethereum currently stores it on the main chain.
Error handling: In Lisk, if your application has an issue it will be contained to only your chain, but require a hard fork to fix. In Ethereum, applications are run in a virtual machine on the main chain so any error should just result in the waste of transaction fees, but be contained to the VM (as long as there is no bug in the VM).
Lisk uses DPoS, while Ethereum currently uses PoW (they have stated they plan to switch to PoS eventually).
Applications VM: Ethereum applications are run in the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Lisk does not have a VM, but it is in development.

Differences from Crypti

Lisk commonly compared to Crypti, because it is a fork of it. However, they have various differences:

The database has been changed from SQLite to PostgreSQL.

Completely open source and the whole development procedure is happening in public on GitHub.
BIP39 enforced for all passphrases
Development is continuing and active, while Crypti seems to have stopped.

A Glimpse from LISK COIN Wikipedia Page:

Lisk started as a fork of Crypti beginning with an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) to decide the initial distribution and raise development funds. The ICO raised 14,000 BTC and, at the time, was the second most successful cryptocurrency crowdfund (later that month, WAVES and The DAO would surpass it). On May 24, 2016, the mainnet for Lisk went live and it became available for trading on major exchanges. Quickly after trading started, Lisk briefly became the second most popular cryptocurrency traded against Bitcoin.

Lisk uses the DPoS (Delegated-Proof-of-Stake) algorithm originally created by BitShares. What differentiates it from regular PoS (Proof of Stake) is that only the top 101 delegates (determined by voting weight of voters) are actively forging and securing the network.

Lisk DPoS functions through a series of rounds. Rounds consist of 101 individual blocks. Each of the 101 active delegates are randomly assigned 1 block within the round to forge. A full cycle round takes 17 minutes. If a selected delegate is unable to forge their assigned block, activity from that block moves to the next block in the round.

Block Time

The Lisk network forges blocks in 10s intervals. In the event that a delegate fails to properly forge their assigned block, the transactions move to the next block in the round, causing the block to be extended by 10s. Each subsequent missed block results in a 10s delay for transaction processing and confirmations.

Forging

Lisk utilizes an inflationary forging rewards system which creates new LSK for every successful block. During year 1, the forging rewards are set at 5 LSK per block. Every 3,000,000 blocks (~1 year) forging rewards are reduced by 1 LSK, ending at 1 LSK per block after 5 years. The forging rewards will then stay at 1 LSK per block indefinitely. The Forging Rewards will be equally distributed through all active (top 101) delegates, same as any network fees.

https://lisk.io/

Lisk Twitter: https://twitter.com/liskhq

Lisk BitcoinTalk Thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1346646.0

Lisk Team: https://lisk.io/team

Lisk Blog: http://blog.lisk.io/