Lisk's network launches this month. The project raised over 4,600 BTC, roughly $1.9 million, through a coin offering that started in February and runs through the end of March. Upon launch, the team w
Lisk's network launches this month. The project raised over 4,600 BTC, roughly $1.9 million, through a coin offering that started in February and runs through the end of March. Upon launch, the team will distribute 85 million LISK tokens to participants.
Max Kordek leads the effort as CEO, with Olivier Beddows serving as CTO. They built Lisk to help developers create blockchain applications without extensive new training. The platform runs on Node.js, a JavaScript framework that thousands of developers already know. According to the white paper, "Lisk is the first decentralized application solution written entirely in Node.js," opening the ecosystem to thousands of current developers with no additional skills necessary.
"Lisk is about enabling anybody to launch their own personal blockchain to store decentralized, distributed information and connect users for any reason, not just coins. The possibilities are endless and limited only by your imagination," the white paper states.
Developers can build, publish, distribute, and monetize applications within a cryptocurrency-powered environment. Kordek and Beddows created an "entire plug and play system," a fully featured platform that requires no special training for developers who want to experiment with applications.
The fundraising accepted multiple cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin and Crypti came in without conversion. For payments in Ether, Dash, Litecoin, Nxt, Monero, Peercoin, Namecoin, or Dogecoin, the team used ShapeShift's instant exchange service to convert them to BTC.
Microsoft announced support for Lisk this week. Marley Grey, Director of Business Development and Strategy for Cloud and Enterprise at Microsoft, introduced Lisk to the Azure Blockchain as a Service ecosystem alongside four other projects: Augur, BitShares, Syscoin, and Slock.it. The partnership lets developers around the world use Microsoft's cloud infrastructure to build, test, and deploy Lisk applications.
Lisk also partnered with Chain of Things, a research lab formed by technologists at the intersection of Internet of Things hardware manufacturing and alternative blockchain applications. The group investigates whether blockchain can secure IoT systems and tests whether blockchain-based IoT applications could work at scale.
Kordek said in a blog post: "Through this new partnership, we hope to find possible areas of cooperation between other members, and help formulate open standards that will benefit the industry as a whole."
The project also counts Ethereum and Iota among its partners. Iota is a new cryptocurrency for micro-transactions in the Internet of Things ecosystem.
