Lisk Review for Beginners: Sidechains for Every Purpose

The Lisk network is a competitor to Ethereum and NEO. Basically, it’s another decentralized application (dApp) network that’s using smart contracts, sidechains, and the LSK token to power the network.

But there’s more to Lisk than just that.

For one thing, it has JavaScript support, making it possible for a huge number of developers to jump in and beginning coding dApps on the Lisk network right now, with no learning curve what-so-ever. That alone could make Lisk the perfect blockchaon for web-based applications.

There’s a good chance you’ve heard of Lisk already because there are quite a few hyped projects being built on the platform, and many more waiting in the wings.

Lisk is also working diligently to get the word out itself, and the Lisk Foundation has introduced Lisk Meetups for the community, and the Lisk Academy. The Lisk Academy is a comprehensive and unbiased educational platform on blockchain technology. The whole Academy is free and open to everyone.

Lisk was created by Max Kordek and Oliver Beddows as a fork of Crypti back in 2016. Several key members of Ethereum’s original team are reportedly working on the Lisk team as well.

In February 2018 the Lisk platform underwent a major rebranding, making the site less cluttered, and providing a more dedicated focus on creating a platform that can be used by many types of blockchain enthusiasts and creators, not just developers. In essence, Lisk is looking to bring blockchain development to the masses.

Before taking a deeper look at the technology behind Lisk, I’ll give you a look at the LSK coin.

Lisk Review: LSK Coin History

LSK was released in a 2016 ICO, with tokens priced at $0.10 at the time. As of September 2018, after nearly a full year of a bear market in cryptocurrencies, LSK is still valued at $3.36, having fallen steadily since hitting an all-time high of $38.40 on January 7, 2018.

This makes LSK currently the 25th largest coin by market cap, with a market cap of $371,605,200 and a circulating supply of 111,533,648 LSK.

Even with a nearly year-long bear market the price of LSK tokens is up substantially from its ICO price of 2 years ago. It’s certainly not anywhere near the value of most top coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum, but it remains worth watching as it’s been holding steady in the top 25 coins.

One of the factors that has helped LSK maintain a good value is its strategic partnerships, such as the one with Microsoft. Having Lisk available on the Azure Cloud platform increases the viability of the network, and by using JavaScript the platform could easily gain mainstream acceptance as a blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) platform.

By leveraging the use of sidechains Lisk has its aim focused on the enterprise market. It’s made itself user-friendly, even for non-tech users. And investing in Lisk can be seen as almost equivalent to investing in the projects and apps that will eventually be using the platform.

In addition, Lisk holders could become the beneficiaries of airdrops in the future, and those free tokens could become worth substantial amounts if any of the related projects take-off.

Lisk Review: Who’s Behind Lisk?

Lisk was co-founded by Olivier Beddows and Max Kordek and was released on May 24, 2016. Both remain with the project today, with Max as the CEO and Olivier as the CTO.

Lisk was created as a hard fork of Crypti, and in the first weeks following its ICO it was second largest cryptocurrency by trading volume.

The co-founders were recently able to negotiate a partnership with Microsoft to include Lisk as a part of the Azure platform. That means developers can develop, test, and deploy Lisk blockchain applications using Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform and infrastructure. It also means that adoption of Lisk should increase.

Lisk Review: Development

While apps traditionally have a front end and a back end, Lisk is working also with side chains, making it an infinitely scalable platform that can handle any type of decentralized app that developers can dream up. That makes it an ideal addition to the Azure platform, because Lisk will be able to handle anything that the scores of Microsoft developers can throw at it.

While it’s true that most of the smart contract networks have a great deal of hype and hope behind them, few have the strong strategic partnerships that Lisk has.

Lisk was created as a modular approach to dApps and this makes it an extremely powerful tool in the right hands. It will give developers the right tools to build fast, scalable applications, and that will help lift the price of LSK over time, as well as helping to keep LSK stable.

Of course it’s not immune to crypto-market crashes as we’ve seen in 2018, but I expect it can recover more quickly than many other coins.

This will become increasingly true as adoption of Lisk increases. Eventually the sidechains being built on Lisk could spawn new valuable collectibles, disruptive dApps that replace traditional implementations, and valuable startups.

Between its partnerships, its growing community, and the growing list of dApps, Lisk as the type of support that most other cryptocurrencies can only dream of.

Lisk Review: How to Use Lisk

One of the missions of Lisk is to make it easy for developers to create outstanding decentralized applications. Below is the simple three step process that can be used to create and launch an application on Lisk:

Code: Lisk allows developers to code in pure JavaScript to take advantage of the powerful APIs included with Lisk. And with every single dApp running on its own sidechain the Lisk main chain remains secure and scalable.

Deploy: Developers are able to deploy code in a number of ways, including via a web server or Github. Once the application has been deployed it’s a simple task to register it on the Lisk platform.

Use: Once the applications are ready to launch, Lisk can operate as a decentralized powerhouse for that application. “By utilizing our extensive user base,” the official Lisk website explains, “End users and developers can find third party nodes to execute future blockchain applications through servers all over the world in a truly decentralized manner.” The application is secured by worldwide decentralized computation of code.

To remain secure, Lisk uses the delegated Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism that was originally created for BitShares by Dan Larimer. This means that only the top 101 delegates are ever actively forging and securing the network. The determination of the top 101 delegates is made through the votes of Lisk holders.

Projects on Lisk

Lisk re-launched in February, and one of the key focuses following that re-launch was making it easier to develop and launch sidechains. Below are some of the most important Lisk projects that have been released.

Sapiens

Sapiens is looking to create a notarial type service that allows for certification and verification of credentials, records and certificates. The primary focus of the project is on academic institutions, but there are many other use-cases where people could use Sapiens to control their data and certificates.

Sapiens was launched back in 2016 by developer Matteo Ferrari, but recently moved to the Lisk platform to take advantage of the ease of development, security and scalability of Lisk.

Based on information from the Sapiens team, adding these academic references to a blockchain application will make it more efficient and verifiable to provide services and certificates. The team wants to make it easy for anyone to digitize all the necessary information for their career on the blockchain.

BrikBit

BrikBit was developed just this year and is a blockchain application for the real estate sector. It also includes its own cryptocurrency, the BRIK, which will have its ICO beginning October 18, 2018. The platform looks to create a REDA (Real Estate Digital Asset) for each property.

The creation of a blockchain based REDA is the largest challenge facing BrikBit, since there’s no object that accurately reflects the value of property. BrikBit is looking to create such an asset that will include everything about the property in digital form, including any renovation, construction, or destruction of the property.

Adamant

Adamant is using the Lisk blockchain to build a decentralized open-source messenger app. The goal is to address several issues with existing messenger services, particularly holes in security which are a given in centralized messenger services. They also seek to address privacy concerns that come with the traditional messenger services.

Adamant bills itself as the only secure private messenger running completely on a blockchain. While the project isn’t an actual Lisk sidechain, it is based on the Lisk codebase and plans on using the LSK coin as a payment method in the Adamant Messenger.

GNY

The GNY project began in 2015 and was known as Grey Jean Technologies at that time. GNY has a mission to create a platform that supports artificial intelligence and machine learning. It’s actually a cross-blockchain project and GNY plans on creating its own blockchain as well as using its own elements in existing blockchains to add new elements to them. In addition to the Lisk sidechain, GNY also builds on Ethereum and Asch.

The focus of the project is to find a way to process the incredible amounts of digital data being create so that it is all useful for business. It recognizes recurring patterns are important to this, as are learning components to adapt to user behaviors. GNY has built on Lisk so that holders of its token can get access to the Lisk platform learning tools.

Lisk Review: Conclusion

Many people may think of Lisk as small potatoes when compared with larger blockchains such as Ethereum and NEO, but it has proven it can stand on its own by creating a strong community, solid partnerships and excellent development. Rather than making a strong stand in competing with other blockchain projects, Lisk is happy to get along with everyone, and that strategy has helped to keep LSK prices supported.

While Lisk remains a smaller blockchain than Ethereum, it has several of the original Ethereum developers as part of its team, and it operates in a similar manner to Ethereum. It has one major strength that Ethereum doesn’t have however, and that’s its partnership with Microsoft.

That partnership, and the support for Azure Cloud, JavaScript and sidechains makes Lisk an ideal choice for enterprise development, and this could be a very powerful combination.

I think of Lisk as a very solid contender in the crowded cryptocurrency markets. The coming years will almost certainly see hundreds, if not thousands, of projects falling by the wayside, but Lisk seems to be headed in the right direction and is likely to have staying power as long as it continues on its current path.