Welcome to CTA’s Fundamental Analysis of Lisk. As always you can follow us on our Forums, Twitter, Steemit, and Discord. We are also open to any feedback on these articles, if you feel certain sections are lacking then feel free to comment and we’ll look to improve on it!  

What is Lisk?

Lisk is a decentralized block chain that aims to allow for the development and distribution of block chain applications built in JavaScript, one of the most in use languages in the world.  These block chain applications are deployed as custom side chains to the original Lisk block chain. The LSK Token then acts as a go between for side chain applications, used to pay for various fees in order to both generate transactions and to use the system.  

In order to create these side chain applications the Lisk App SDK framework is used to streamline the creation of block chain applications. Another way of putting this is that developers can create block chain applications from a single complete package framework. As of writing the Lisk App SDK has entered version 0.9.0 with its release nearing within the next few months. Version information can be found on the Lisk Github page.  

Lisk brands its self as being a modular cryptocurrency due to how it utilizes side chains in order to build block chain applications. It’s an intelligent solution to the problem of containing all transactions and applications on a singular block chain which results in a ‘bloated’ network. An example of this problem would be the recent bloat on the Ethereum network being caused by ICOs.  

This side chain technology also enables security by isolation, with the main Lisk chain being isolated from other side chains, thus a failure of a side chain has no impact on other side chains or the primary Lisk chain.  

Lastly it’s important to note that Lisk runs a Delegated Proof of Stake consensus system. A DPoS system allows for stakeholder approval voting resolving any consensus issues in a fair and democratic way. Nearly all network variables can be tuned through this system, including block intervals, transaction sizes, fees, etc. At no time can a singular party (Government for example) step in and try to alter the network to how they want it, it instead requires a consensus among the community for any changes to occur.  

Lisk Specifications  

•  Block Time: 10 seconds 
•  Round Time: ~17 minutes  
•  Confirmations for Final Transaction: 6-10  
•  Supply: 100 million LISK + Forging Rewards (currently 5 LSK per block, depreciating 1 LSK per year till 1 LSK per Block)  
•  Lisk's official ticker: LSK  
•  Lisk's official currency symbol: Ⱡ  

History of Lisk  

Lisk has been in development since 2016, with its Initial Coin Offering having taken place early 2016. The main net has been live since May 24, 2016. The Founders of Lisk are Max Kordek, and Oliver Beddows. The ICO for Lisk was an enormous success with Lisk gaining over 14000 Bitcoin which at the time of the ICO would have been worth around 5 million USD. That initial ICO supply today however is worth much more, meaning the Lisk team is well funded for the long term. This is shown with its large development team of over 15 members that is continuing to expand, allowing Lisk to make significant development progress over its short history.  

What Lisk aims to solve  

Lisk is aiming to solve the problem of the enormous entry barrier new developer’s face when attempting to create block chain applications. It is one of the primary advantages of Lisk that its SDK runs on JavaScript and provides an all-encompassing framework for development of block chain applications to lower the aforementioned entry barrier, allowing for developers to quickly learn how to create block chain applications by providing an easy to use framework within the context of one of the most well-known and used languages.  

Team Behind lisk  

The original founders of Lisk are Max Kordek and Oliver Beddows, two developers who originally worked on Crypti, before forking it into what would become Lisk. Both developers have a reputation for being friendly, and knowledgeable about blockchain development. Since the founding of Lisk the team has expanded into a team of, as of writing, 15 members. The team is fully transparent in their identities, meaning they all have a reputation to up hold and accountability for their project.  Overall the team appears to be a well put together team of developers, with each developer having strong experience in their fields. A full list of the team can be found at https://lisk.io/team   

Future of Lisk 

The future of Lisk has been planned out in the Lisk Roadmap. Currently Lisk is coming to the end of the Inception stage, and is beginning to enter the Resilience stage. The Lisk SDK has just reached v0.9 as of a few days ago and will be officially released as v1.0 within the next couple of months. Once this occurs Lisk will undergo a major re-branding before development of Lisk continues to expand and build upon the features the SDK already offers. It is expected that once the SDK and re-branding occurs Lisk will most likely cause a general uptrend in price and market-cap, this is because developers will finally be able to start utilizing Lisk as a means of deploying their own Block chain applications. Eventually Lisk will deploy Smart Contracts, Mobile Application support, and much more as outlined in the Roadmap. With Lisk having at time of writing funding over 40 million dollars (originally 5m worth of Bitcoin at the time of ICO) the development team is well funded for the long term and is likely to eventually be able to achieve the many goals laid out in the roadmap. 

Should you invest?   

For the long term Lisk is a very promising investment. We highly recommend considering Lisk in any long term portfolio, currently with a sluggish market Lisk has a very good entry point at time of writing. It is expected that an exit point will be presented around the time of SDK launch and Lisk re-branding, although it is also possible that after the SDK and re-branding Lisk may continue to see large growth as development of the Lisk ecosystem continues to add features and as developers begin to adopt Lisk as a means of creating block chain applications.  

We do not recommend shorting Lisk at the current time, any investments should be long.  

As always before investing ensure that you do your own research into the coin, do not take our word or the word of anyone else as truth, trust only your own research!