Five years ago, on May 24th 2016 at 5am UTC, the Lisk network was successfully launched and the Lisk v0.3.0 was deployed to the public. This was just the beginning of our journey to create the Lisk blockchain application platform. Since the Mainnet went live, Lisk reached a block height of 15.5 million. Over 1880 delegate accounts have been registered on the network and more than 37 million LSK tokens have been forged by delegates so far.

By making use of developer tools, cryptocurrency wallets, and a vibrant community, we aim to make blockchain more accessible by creating a world in which everyone benefits from this technology. In the past years, Lisk has been continually improving its technology and strengthening its ecosystem. This blog post summarizes some of the most important network milestones and major achievements of the past year.

Development Achievements

Design Improvements of Lisk for Desktop

Lisk for Desktop has been the primary application for interacting with the Lisk blockchain since the early days of 2016. This application was developed over four years, and during this time many new features were introduced and we received some excellent feedback from our esteemed community. This feedback helped us draw a line between our innovative development and the expectation from a user’s perspective, coupled with how users interact with Lisk for Desktop.

Four years after we began this journey, we have simultaneously constructed and shaped the majority of features to work optimally for the end-users. In August 2020 we announced the release of the following features:

• Unified Navigation Menu
• Navigation Bars for All Screen Sizes
• Start in Guest Mode
• Improved Usage of Modal Screens

• Visible Network Switcher

  

Lisk Service

In September 2020, we released a new product as part of the Lisk ecosystem - Lisk Service. This product offers the possibility to access and browse Lisk’s blockchain data by providing accessible and powerful new API calls. Lisk Service, fully written in JavaScript, acts as a service layer between blockchain data and user interfaces and can be used with any blockchain application built with the Lisk SDK.

Launch of Betanet v4 and v5

In 2020 we launched the Betanet v4 and the Betanet v5. All objectives of the Economics and Consensus phase have been successfully implemented into Lisk SDK 4.0.0 and therefore Lisk Core 3.0.0-beta.1 has been released. This came with a multitude of new features on the protocol and various improvements on the code level.

All objectives of the Network Longevity phase and several Lisk SDK improvements were successfully implemented into both Lisk SDK 5.0.0, and Lisk Core 3.0.0-beta.2 which were released. This came with a multitude of new features on the protocol and various improvements on the code level.

External Security Audit of Lisk SDK 5.0.0 and Lisk Core 3.0.0

Lisk SDK 5.0.0 and the mainnet release Lisk Core 3.0.0 marked a major milestone for the Lisk project. In addition to a large number of non-protocol improvements, 28 Lisk Improvement Proposals (LIPs) were implemented as part of Lisk Core 3.0.0. We covered most of these in detail in the research blog post series last year and also summarized them here. Due to a large number of changes and our commitment to the highest security standards, it was of key importance to us that the new Lisk protocol, Lisk SDK 5.0.0, and the upcoming mainnet release Lisk Core 3.0.0 were additionally reviewed as part of an external security audit.

The audit reported the overall high quality of the Lisk codebase and complimented the Lisk project on following best practices in regards to security, software design, and code composition.

Replacing the Lisk Explorer

Lisk Explorer was a blockchain explorer designed for monitoring the Lisk network, inspecting the Lisk blockchain, and watching LSK exchange markets. After implementing all of these important features into Lisk for Desktop, Lisk’s desktop wallet, we decided to make our product suite leaner and more agile, therefore discontinuing all further development of the current Lisk Explorer.

However, being fully aware that the Lisk Explorer was a very important and useful tool for many people to conveniently check and monitor the Lisk blockchain network we began to collaborate with two Lisk community projects, namely Liskscan.io and Lisk.observer. Through our grant program, it was then possible to continue developing their alternative Lisk blockchain explorers and implement new features.

As Lisk further evolved and being a project from developers for developers, we also wanted to provide them with a myriad of useful tools to further complement the development of blockchain applications with the Lisk SDK. Therefore, we are currently developing the dashboard plugin for the Lisk SDK. The dashboard plugin provides easy access to the node information during the early phases of development and offers developers and node operators monitoring capabilities.

Research Achievements

In May 2020 we announced that the research of the four protocol roadmap phases “Security and Reliability”, “Network Economics”, “Network Consensus”, and “Network Longevity” was completed and 35 LIPs were completed and merged into GitHub. All these protocol changes will be part of the Lisk Core Mainnet release this year. The changes for each phase were summarized in a blog post and a series of blog posts for each specific topic was published on the official Lisk blog.

The past year has been a very important one for the research on interoperability. The research team started the research for the last phase of our roadmap: “Blockchain Interoperability”, analyzed papers and other projects in order to identify available technologies. Once the possible solutions were analyzed, they decided on a general high-level direction for the Lisk interoperability. The high-level direction was presented during Lisk Updates 2020 and included in a blog post published on the Lisk blog. With the direction set, the research team drafted the interoperability specifications and in conclusion, wrote all LIPs for the interoperability solution for Lisk, which were announced and published at Lisk.js 2021.

Other Achievements

The Opening of Lisk Center Berlin

It was essential for our ecosystem to be grounded in a common space whereby community members work and collaborate towards making blockchain technology more mature and accessible.

Therefore,in November 2020, we opened the Lisk Center in Berlin on Köpenicker Straße, situated between the districts of Kreuzberg and Mitte. The Lisk Center Berlin offers a dedicated space in the heart of Berlin designed for attracting developers, blockchain enthusiasts, and innovators, and bringing them together to share their ideas and contribute to the Lisk ecosystem by building blockchain applications.

In order to mark the opening of Lisk Center Berlin, we hosted an online event featuring an introduction to the Lisk Center Berlin, future plans, and presentations about our Research and Development progress.

1st Year Anniversary of Lisk Builders Program

In November 2020 we proudly celebrated the first anniversary of the Lisk Builders program.

The Lisk Builders program was originally launched in November 2019 at Lisk.js, a few months after the first alpha version of the Lisk SDK had been released. The overall goal of the program was to incentivize developers to dive into the technology and to develop a variety of different proof of concept blockchain applications that showcase what can be achieved by building projects with the Lisk SDK. In total, there were 14 multinational participants who took part in the Lisk Builders program from eight different countries.

Joining Crypto Open Patent Alliance

In March 2021, alongside prominent members such as Coinbase and Blockstream, we became a member of the Crypto Open Patent Alliance(otherwise known as COPA), to bolster sharing of cryptocurrency-related patents. As an official member of the alliance, we pledged to never use their crypto patents against anyone, except for defensive purposes, making these patents free for all to use.

Introducing Lisk.com

Recently we proudly introduced Lisk.com, a more developer-friendly entry point into the Lisk ecosystem. As we continually move towards the production phase at Lisk, we have decided to build upon our solid base of Lisk.io and refresh it with a more professional tone. Our newly acquired domain, Lisk.com features several substantial improvements, new pages, and a refreshed design, delivering an optimal and enhanced user experience that more closely aligns with our core mission, to make blockchain accessible to everyone.

In essence, our biggest challenge and motivation was for Lisk.com to offer the fastest and simplest development entry point for anyone looking to build a blockchain application using JavaScript. We are confident that we have now achieved this goal.

Hosting Lisk.js 2021

As Lisk.js 2019 was an outstanding success, bringing together a myriad of developers and blockchain enthusiasts, we decided to host Lisk.js 2021 as a two-day virtual event, featuring talks from Lisk team members, in conjunction with members from our esteemed Lisk community who have been building blockchain applications with the Lisk SDK.

Lisk.js returned on May 21st - 22nd, 2021, and was hosted fully online, so everyone could remain safe and healthy. We had a multitude of viewers tuning into the live-streaming event on our official YouTube channel, for both the first day and the second day. The event was live-streamed from the stage in the Kühlhaus venue in Berlin. Our two-day event featured a packed agenda comprising the latest cutting-edge and in-depth presentations by our research, development, and marketing teams. These talks included the latest updates, a deep dive into the Lisk interoperability solution, our upcoming online hackathon - HackOnLisk, our newly improved Lisk Grant program, live demo, the blockchain applications showcase from our Lisk core community members, and much more.

Lisk.js 2021 proved to be a remarkable event for both Lisk and all of our community and we are already looking forward to next year’s edition of our annual blockchain developer-focused event, which will be hosted as a hybrid event.

Finally, we would like to say a big thank you to the entire Lisk community for the ongoing commitment and support. We are very grateful to have you all working together with us to drive the Lisk ecosystem further forward to the next level.