Max opens the AMA:

Hello @everyone, Welcome to this month’s Ask Max Anything! I’m looking forward to your questions, seeing that there are more than 300 people online I’m sure it will be an interesting session today. As announced last time, my AMAs will stay on Lisk.chat, however, the most interesting questions I’ll feature again on my new YouTube channel. I’ve just started that effort a few weeks ago and there are already 10 videos online with over 85 hours watched by my viewers. I’m curious to see where this new challenge takes me, you can expect the quality to go up over time. I’ve already purchased a microphone so the newer videos should have much better audio quality than the older ones.

A few key highlights of the last few weeks include:

• Announced Lisk.js
• Replaced the Lisk Explorer
• Joined the Crypto Open Patent Alliance
• Released new versions of Lisk for Desktop and Lisk for Mobile
• Published more information about our interoperability solution
• Published financial update for March
• Featured as a top 50 crypto project from Zug

I’m ready for your questions!

Crypto_Embassy: Any idea of a listing on Coinbase?

Max: This topic came up quite a few times in recent weeks. Not sure where it stems from, likely just the wish to get listed on Coinbase to make LSK accessible to the US market. We are currently in the process of contacting various US law firms based in the US to support us in acquiring a legal opinion which is required for those US exchange listings where they put part of the compliance process on our shoulders.

One US law firm already came back to us and said that they are not providing such an opinion. So let's see what the others say, we just contacted them again today. That's however not limited to Coinbase but also other exchanges either based in the US or targeting US customers. I think Coinbase will be a tough nut to crack, other US exchanges are likely easier to get listed at. Everyone can help us by contacting their favorite exchange and asking them to list Lisk.

futurewind: What are the future plans for Lisk Center Tokyo?

Max: Unfortunately, our partner BINARYSTAR has ceased operations and therefore we were forced to move out of the location. We have not searched for an alternative Lisk Center location in Japan. Our community member LISKer has proposed to create a Japanese Lisk Association. We are still looking into that and need more time to decide because it's a bigger project and requires several internal discussions.

noelg75: Hi Max, thanks for the AMA, and congrats to all the team for all the hard work. What are your plans concerning the future revenue sources of Lisk?

Max: It's likely that this year we will reveal more information about that. If we are talking about revenue sources for the Lisk Foundation there are several possibilities for us.

For example:

• Running a Lisk delegate
• Developing blockchain applications
• Investing our assets to receive yields/dividends

Just today we have sent 300 BTC (around 17,000,000 USD) to Bitcoin Suisse for liquidation. More information about that will be revealed in our next Financial Update. However, with that we have cash for around 3 years of operations. With the remaining of our assets as seen in today's Financial Update we have a run-rate of over 10 years.

My personal goal is to drive significant revenue until 2025.

Lis-zou: Hi Max, I'm really looking forward to the Lisk.js event. By the way, do you have any exciting news for April?

Max: Every month there is exciting news!

• We just published our high-level overview of the interoperability solution, definitely worth checking out.
• We have just published a new LIP on our research forum.
• We are going to publish at least one more LIP this month. Stay tuned for that.
• There will be a podcast interview published this month together with me.
• More speakers and details will be announced for Lisk.js.

Before Lisk.js we will also publish some other exciting news which I don't want to reveal yet. Keep your eyes open on our website and social media channels.

Crypto_Embassy: On a more serious note, although covid isn't making it easy, is the ambassador program still on (didn't see any updates about it)

Max: The ambassador program was shut down in 2019 as far as I remember. For the time being there is no plan to revive that. Maybe after Covid-19 we are picking up the discussion again if we see demand from the community.

Season2: Hi Max, from the NFT standpoint, what will be the major difference and advantage on Lisk compared with Ethereum?

Max: The major difference will be that NFTs will live natively on multiple chains and not only on one. However, NFT transfers between these chains will be possible without any problem. Currently, NFTs represent in most cases collector items. E.g. a piece of art, and are not often used for other purposes. This is the case due to the very high transaction fees on Ethereum. However, with sidechains the transaction fees will be low enough to use NFTs for other interesting use-cases as well, e.g. tickets or royalties.

mamama: Hi Max, I appreciate your work! Do you have any idea who holds the second largest number of LSK tokens?

Max: Looking at the many transactions of this account it's very likely an exchange. I think it's UpBit. However, I'm not sure. We have not contacted them. See the rich list here: https://explorer.lisk.io/topAccounts

korben3: Hi, Is there an indication when Core 3.0.0 will be released for testnet, will it be after Lisk.js? I think a lot of people are interested to see how the mainnet migration and regenesis process will go in practice.

Max: After Lisk.js but still this year. In May we are going to publish the migration documentation which will give delegates more insights about the entire process. This way they can prepare themselves. We are going to perform a (Testnet) test before the actual Testnet migration. And another (Mainnet) test before the actual Mainnet migration.

futurewind: 1) Does the Lisk Foundation have a BTC liquidation plan for a bull market, besides the 12 month CHF(swiss franc) runway? 2) Once interoperability LIPs are revealed at lisk.js, will some resources be allocated to immediately begin implementing them?

Max: 1. In my opinion, we are in a bull market for a few months. We just transferred 300 BTC to Bitcoin Suisse for further liquidation. More information will be revealed in our next Financial Update. We have plans to not just liquidate them into EUR. Our current runway in fiat is longer than 12 months, I think it's around 15 months currently.

2. Before interoperability is being implemented our development team goes through a requirement gathering process. That will start immediately after Lisk.js or maybe even before already. Implementation follows once enough information and requirements are gathered. This speeds up development time significantly and has been practiced since Lisk SDK 3.0.0 if I remember correctly.

Goodtimes: Hi Max, are there any new team members joining?

Max: Yep! In the last few days the following people were joining Lightcurve:

• Mehmet as a backend developer
• Dmitrii as a motion designer
• Miguel as a community manager

We still have positions open for a frontend developer and business developer. More details about open positions here.

Zoulette: Are we going to have real answers about the interoperability question at Lisk.js? Are you going to give to the community a real solution or some possible ways to resolve this problem and you are going to work on it?

Max: It will be the real deal. A complete specification in the form of 19 LIPs (research papers) of how interoperability will work within the Lisk ecosystem. That's why Lisk.js will be a two day event to give us enough time to explain everything properly. The LIPs themselves will likely be published on Monday two days later. We are going to jump onto the development process right away.

Laliny: Hi Max, I would like to know what LISK is making efforts to develop a platform for a metaverse-based blockchain game network. Also, if you have any plans for this, I would love to hear about that.

Max: Our effort is the development of the Lisk SDK with which developers can build their own blockchain applications and later hook it up to our ecosystem to seamlessly transfer tokens and data between their and other chains. We don't have any plans currently to engage with a blockchain game network. I hope our community will do that, there is the Arcado Network blockchain application by Endro which has gaming as a use-case.

Season2: Hi Max, is there any plan to prepare an AppStore-like review and authorization process to pre-check the security/safety level of released side chain apps while it might be an anti-decentralized idea?

Max: We had quite a few ideas in accordance to that. However, for the time being we will skip that. A decentralized, community-run effort in that direction proofs to be working out quite nicely for other blockchain application platforms. There are many websites promoting good and secure blockchain applications. So I don't see why it shouldn't work for us. The most important thing for our users is to never enter their passphrase into third party user interfaces.

justanotherdude: You said you were going to drop something soon. Was that the interoperability blog, or that’s still to come?

Max: Revealed it here.

Crypto_Embassy: What do you think of kadena, and do you think we could bridge LSK on to it ? Notably so it can interface with kadenaswap.

Max: Never heard of them. Just checking out their website. A further split of the community into yet another project, I guess they have some innovation going on so that seems fine. We could definitely bridge LSK onto it, however, we are going to focus on our efforts first. More than enough to do.

Dynamicpegclub: Any plans to list on a DEX like Pancakeswap?

Max: No. We would have to create a wrapped LSK on Ethereum. This is something the Lisk Foundation would have trouble to do. I don't see the immediate advantage for that anyways (besides being able to participate in DeFi). Users would have to pay 10x the fee of what a single token is worth.

Dynamicpegclub: Pancakeswap is on Binance chain and the gas fees are very cheap compared to erc20 chains.

Max: Ah I see. The Binance smart chain is coined as CeDeFi, correct? It's nothing we have planned to do right now.

Zoulette: As a pure investor and planning to make my family eat some good filet mignon, I’m also concerned by the price of Lisk token, do you plan to do some videos to generate some hype around Lisk, this market is on steroids and one video could change lot of things, is it on your marketing plans ? I’ve heard that Lisk is going to do some tutorial videos with the devs as targets but do you plan to target the lambda investor ?

Max: We keep the focus on building and on developers. We have recently introduced some efforts to talk to the lambda investor or generally the blockchain community, like my own YouTube channel, CoinTelegraph articles, working with Wachsman on interviews/podcasts and so on. However, I'm quite sure that with the help of Dmitrii we will also create several not purely developer focused videos over the coming months.

Yousif: Hey Max, if you were a trader how much would you invest in LISK and what are your 3 price targets ? And when do you think LISK gonna pump the price up hard! Is there some news or event in the future you think will do that?

Max: I won't comment on price, price targets, pumps. I can only say that the next two years will be very interesting for Lisk from a technological standpoint. Lisk.js is around the corner, Lisk Core 3.0.0 will be released this year, interoperability will soon start to be implemented. So I think the future is looking very good for the Lisk ecosystem right now.

justanotherdude: Any partnerships in the work?

Max: Just recently we went into a partnership with Wachsman, just announced the partnership with COPA and have several media partnerships for Lisk.js. We are working on some other stuff but nothing I can reveal today.

korben3: The year is 2030, what impact has Lisk and Lightcurve achieved in the blockchain world and on society? What do you hope for?

Max: I hope that we made blockchain application development accessible to developers so that they introduced several groundbreaking and scalability use-cases for this technology. With that blockchain technology has finally reached the mainstream audience gaining popularity outside of solely being an investment.

grandpl: Hi @MaxKordek, during the last AMA you've mentioned there is going to be some kind of acquisition revealed before Lisk.js, when can we expect that and is it still valid?

Max: It's still valid. When? Before Lisk.js which is already happening in 6 weeks.

Season2: I’ve heard that Ethereum 2.0 will have the resolution of the expensive gas fee issue soon. Any other advantage?

Max: That's up to the developers to figure out. With the Lisk SDK you have much more flexibility in creating a blockchain application. If you are just asking about a regular NFT then that will be the same thing on every platform. What you are looking for is an NFT 2.0, an evolution of the current model. That's something developers will likely dive into in the coming months and years. For example I know people working on NFTs which can hold other NFTs inside and evolve them over time. Creating entirely new and unique NFTs this way. Let's see where the space is going, with our Lisk SDK developers have a new way to come up with new experiments and innovation.

KaiLaN: Are there any unexpected problems with the Development of Desktop 2.0? Is there a lack of developers? Following GitHub, the last weeks it seems to me like weekly are only 2 tasks on average are getting closed. What is the reason of that?

Max: Per the community's request we had to put some work into Lisk for Desktop fixing the hardware wallet issues and adding the initialization enforcement, as well as Lisk for Mobile fixing the blurred balance issue and some other stuff. Therefore, development was split a bit. From now on it's again 100% focused on Lisk Desktop 2.0.0 so we should pick up some speed again. We are currently working on Beta.3, the second last beta for this release. There were also some new issues created for bugs encountered during the QA process. There are no unexpected problems with the development. It just takes its time. The only unexpected issue is that hiring a frontend developer (we have one open position) takes longer than expected. No good enough candidates are coming in. Besides that we are on schedule with our internal planning.

Season2: Hi Max, I’d like to confirm the relationship with Lightcurve and Lisk HQ. For instance, if the Lightcurve (private company) is designing and developing the Lisk itself, what is the Lisk HQ doing?

Max: Lisk HQ doesn't exist. What you mean is the Lisk Foundation. Lightcurve is in a contractual relationship with the Lisk Foundation to perform research, development, design marketing and business development related tasks. The Lisk Foundation holds all rights to the Lisk project, is overseeing the assets (fiat, crypto and stocks) and oversees the project and its progress in general.

thymothy2: Desktop will be ready before lisk.js?

Max: Next week there will be another development update from Oliver. More information will be revealed then.

ZENSE: Is there any working project built with Lisk? Like is there an use-case already built with it?

Max: Many use-cases were developed as proof of concept blockchain applications. Check them out here.

Ralo: When are they gonna start to broadcast the live AMA?

Max: Like I mentioned before, I'm only going to do the monthly AMAs here on Discord, we are publishing a recap on our blog and I pick the most interesting questions up again on my YouTube channel. Live AMAs are not planned right now, however, we hold this option open for the future.

Season2: Hi Max, currently most of the NFT platform websites requires the Chrome’s plugin Metamask that the users need to interact with to “sign” something. It might be too early to ask but do you think that Metamask would support Lisk soon for the NFT upload/purchase process or will the Lisk desktop wallet have the same function of it instead?

Max: Lisk for Desktop and Lisk for Mobile will have a similar functionality in the future, i.e. signing of any custom transaction of sidechains. I doubt that MetaMask will add support for Lisk.

ZENSE: How hard would it be to create an NFT on top of Lisk without developer experience?

Max: If there is no blockchain application that will facilitate that, it's going to be hard. If there is a blockchain application doing that, it's super easy. You should get involved with coding, give it a try here.

ultrafresh: What are your 2 favorite things to eat since you have been in the USA?

Max: My favorite things which I ate already on my trip in LA are probably:

• Veal chops Milanese at Cecconi's
• Pizza at Pizzeria Da Michele
• Pasta at Il Pastaio

Max: OKAY! That's a wrap. Thank you so much for your great questions. I'll definitely answer some of them on YouTube again, make sure to subscribe!

Have a great rest of the week. We will likely publish the AMA recap tomorrow!

Thanks to everyone in the community for their participation in the live AMA on Lisk.chat.