FAQ
We understand that all of this can be very confusing, so we're here to help.
General
Blockchain is all about fairness and security. It’s a big database that lets you record information safely and interact with anyone, without the need to trust them or rely on a big company.
Blockchain is decentralized, which means it does not have a central point. All of the information is stored on a lot of different computers, which makes it more difficult to break into a single device or steal information. Blockchain technology is a way of recording information onto lots of different devices all at once through the internet. There are many different blockchains, storing different types of information. You can have a blockchain recording money, recording identities, storing music or agreements between people. Literally any type of information can be recorded onto a blockchain in a better way than we have ever seen until now.
Blockchain gets rid of the problem of being unable to trust anyone because everything that is there is meant to be there. We can be sure of this thanks to computer programs that check everything that is added to a blockchain. The data that is recorded on a blockchain is copied onto many different devices that are connected to each other to form a network. Whenever any new information is added, all of the devices are updated through these computer programs.
In order to build your own blockchain application, you will need to understand JavaScript and TypeScript programming languages with considerable amount of developer experience. Developers will be able to create, build and deploy their own sidechain connected to Lisk's mainchain. The more blockchain applications built on our platform, the richer the ecosystem will be. However, that doesn’t mean Lisk is only meant for developers. Anyone can interact with our platform by managing their LSK tokens and voting in our consensus algorithm through our wallets.
Blockchain application might look and feel like regular apps on your phone, but will be running on many servers (nodes), providing unprecedented security and reliability. Blockchain applications will help to create entirely new business models. For example, lack of a central entity managing the application could help lifting unnecessary fees, or censorship. A powerful component of the Lisk application platform is the ability to deploy, distribute and manage blockchain applications as a one-stop-shop with a seamless user experience.
By blockchain application platform, we mean a place where blockchain applications built on Lisk exist and flourish. An ecosystem where developers and entrepreneurs can connect to create their own projects with the tools built by us. It is also a place where blockchain projects building on Lisk can find team members, supporters, and funding from a rich community of blockchain enthusiasts.
We envision a world in which everyone benefits from blockchain. Given this, the Lisk Foundation set itself the goal to inspire blockchain enthusiasts and developers alike. The ultimate goal is to bring talent into the blockchain industry by enabling you to participate in building the decentralized future with our products, whether you are a technical person or not.
Lisk believes that general purpose protocols should be non-profit. This is why Max and Oliver set up the Lisk Foundation in Zug, Switzerland in 2016. This approach has other benefits as well – easy and fast incorporation, friendly regulatory environment, and a handy ecosystem of other foundations and other services.
Lightcurve GmbH was then set up by the Lisk Foundation in early 2017 and is managed by Directors Max Kordek and Oliver Beddows. It’s a blockchain development studio, employing approximately 50 team members who work on blockchain development, marketing, community management, business development and operations to strengthen the Lisk platform. Currently, the Lightcurve team is based in Berlin, Germany and is exclusively on the retainer of the Lisk Foundation.
Lisk is a blockchain application platform, founded by Max Kordek and Oliver Beddows in early 2016. Based on its own blockchain network and utility token, LSK, it will enable developers to build blockchain applications and create an ecosystem of blockchain applications for mainstream users to benefit from.
Before blockchain can achieve its full potential, it needs to gain mass adoption. Lisk is determined to solve this problem by becoming a safe and secure gateway to this technology for developers and enthusiasts alike.
The Lisk Foundation received contributions between February 21 and March 22, 2016. Find out more in the Lisk Press & Media Kit. The assets are actively managed by the foundation itself, in accordance to Swiss regulations that apply to foundations of this kind.
Lisk Wallet
The Lisk passphrase works like a password but is much more secure, because it consists of twelve words. Each word is separated by a single space, which increases character length even more. When a user creates an account, a passphrase is randomly generated based on the following Mnemonic BIP39 Word List.
We advise you to initialize your account as soon as possible. When someone sends you LSK, they will use the address in order to do so. Since the address is an abbreviation of the public key, it is less resistant to a collision than the public key is. As soon as you make an outgoing transaction, your public key can be recorded on the blockchain and will be collision-free. In other words, making at least one outgoing transaction from your wallet (even to yourself) will improve the security of your LSK address even more. You can read more about address collision here.
Lisk currently has two official wallets. The desktop app is called Lisk Desktop and the mobile app is called Lisk Mobile - they are available on both iOS and Android devices. We highly recommend using our official wallets to store your LSK tokens. This is because both are actively developed and maintained by the Lisk team. They provide the most secure way to access your LSK tokens. Lisk Wallet Downloads:
First of all, wait. It could take up to 20 seconds to verify your transaction depending on which block it was assigned to. Check which network you are logging into and make sure to select Mainnet when trying to access via the Lisk Desktop wallet. It is worth noting that some exchanges take more time to transfer the funds to wallets. Please be patient and check your wallet the next day. If the funds are still not there, please reach out to the exchange for more information.
Lisk Desktop is an all-in-one solution to manage your Lisk account, access & send tokens, and vote for delegates, among other functions. It combines the functionalities of a cryptocurrency wallet and a network dashboard.
Lisk Mobile is a mobile wallet app offering a limited feature-set, available on iPhone and Android devices. Consensus algorithm features such as registering a delegate and voting for delegates are currently limited to our desktop wallet.
Due to the anonymity of the blockchain, it is impossible to log into your wallet without the twelve-word passphrase. You can review the Mnemonic BIP39 Word List and see if it helps you locate or remember the passphrase. There are a number of passphrase recovery tools created by our community. Please note, none of them are endorsed by the Lisk team and we cannot take responsibility for any issues resulting from using them.
To set up your Lisk account and passphrase in the Lisk Desktop wallet:
- Download Lisk Desktop.
- Open the Lisk Desktop app.
- Click on Create Lisk account.
- Pick your avatar.
- In the next screen, your unique, twelve-word passphrase will be shown.
- You should click on ‘Copy to clipboard’ and paste the passphrase in a secure location.
- Alternatively, you can also download a pdf of a paper wallet version of the passphrase.
- We recommend you to store the passphrase only in paper form.
- Click on ‘I wrote it down’. In the next screen, you can test your passphrase memory by filling in the blanks from the options provided.
- Next, click ‘Confirm’ and you’re all set!
You can also register via the Lisk Mobile wallet– the process is the same.
Obtaining a twelve-word passphrase is the only way to access the Lisk Desktop. It is possible that the place you stored your passphrase at was compromised. We are aware of a number of phishing sites and are actively working on taking the domains down.
There are also several kinds of malware that track users’ movement around the web. These viruses and malware are not yet detectable by popular antivirus software. Should the above be the case, we suggest using Lisk Explorer to track down which exchange the money ended up in and then contacting that exchange directly. This is because most of the exchanges require ID and proof of residence during the registration process.
For Lisk Desktop:
- Go to the upper right corner and click on "Lisk Wallet".
- Click on "Settings".
- Under the Advanced section, click on "Enable BTC".
- From then on, you should be able to active both wallets in the same upper right menu.
For Lisk Mobile:
- In the home screen, swipe left or right to switch between LSK and BTC wallets.
- When it’s activated, you can access your BTC wallet by clicking on the cryptocurrency icon in the top right corner on any page apart from the home screen.
LSK Token
Lisk’s native cryptocurrency, LSK, is a utility token. This means that it is used to perform various actions on the Lisk blockchain. Whether you want to send a transaction, or vote for your favourite delegate, you need to use your LSK in order to do so. As we build out our blockchain application platform, we will be adding even more functions to our utility token related to, for example, creating blockchain applications. With an increasing number of developers and entrepreneurs wanting to build on our platform, the finite supply of LSK required to do so will vastly increase in price.
A new block is created every ten seconds. The first confirmation normally appears within a matter of a few seconds, as soon as it is embedded into a block. The older this block gets, the more immutable the transaction becomes and can be seen as validated. We recommend to wait at least six blocks for smaller transactions and a whole round for larger transactions. Learn more about the Lisk Protocol in our documentation.
Lisk currently has two official wallets. The desktop app is called Lisk Desktop and the mobile app is called Lisk Mobile - they are available on both iOS and Android devices. We highly recommend using our official wallets to store your LSK tokens. This is because both are actively developed and maintained by the Lisk team. They provide the most secure way to access your LSK tokens. Lisk Wallet Downloads:
Active delegates receive forging rewards for securing the network. The top 101 delegate accounts receive a fixed block reward and variable rewards for occurring transactions. You can read more about our consensus algorithm here.
There is no maximum amount in circulation. The inflation rate will decrease over time, for example to 1.74% in the 15th year due to the reduction of the forging rewards. You can read more about our consensus algorithm here.
The initial distribution during the ICO was 100,000,000 LSK. Since the network went live May 24th, 101 delegates are securing the Lisk network and receiving forging rewards for their service.
With every new block created, 5 new LSK will be added to the supply. Every 3,000,000 blocks (~1 year) this reward is reduced by 1 LSK, ending at 1 LSK per block where it stays like that forever. The forging rewards are equally distributed among all 101 delegates.
On top of this, delegates receive transaction fees according to the transactions that were made in the specific block they forged. By implementing this mechanism, Lisk creates an incentive to run a delegate and secure the network, an essential part of our consensus algorithm.
Read more about our consensus algorithm in the documentation.
Currently, the Lisk fees are as follows:
- Outgoing transaction: 0.1 LSK
- Second passphrase: 5 LSK
- Delegate registration: 25 LSK
- Voting: 1 LSK per voting round (33 votes can be made per voting round)
- Multi-sig: 5 LSK per member
However, a dedicated Lisk Research Team is working on a dynamic fee system that will reduce the fees considerably. See Lisk Research for more details.
Lisk Network
We are, first and foremost, an open source project in which development is publicly managed via our GitHub. We place very high value on security – this means we are constantly expanding our code reviews and have a rigorous peer-review system. We also have a Bug Bounty Program for community developers to spot vulnerabilities.
Lisk has never been hacked nor are we aware of any active hacking attempts. As with any software, there have been a number of bugs occurring on the network, which were fixed immediately.
Lisk Network is where the Lisk blockchain exists. On this network, Lisk users are able to transfer LSK tokens from one account to another, register accounts as delegates, vote for delegates and, in the future, will be able to register blockchain applications. Current details of the main network can be viewed on Lisk Explorer.
The Lisk network went live on May 24th, 2016 with the creation of the first block on the Lisk blockchain (the genesis block, which contained 100 million LSK). The first LSK tokens are the original implementation of the Lisk protocol and were initially issued to ICO participants and stakeholders by the Lisk project team.
The Lisk network is both decentralized and trustless. That means no single individual is in direct control. The network is secured by 101 democratically elected delegates whose primary responsibility is to confirm and broadcast the validity of transactions by including them in forged blocks. All Lisk accounts on the network are eligible to vote for delegates registered on Lisk’s blockchain network. Lisk uses Delegated-Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) consensus algorithm. To learn more about DPoS, please visit our documentation.
Much of the trust in Lisk comes from the fact that it requires no trust at all. Lisk is fully open-source and decentralized. This means that everyone has access to the entire source code at any time. Developers around the world are free to inspect and verify exactly how Lisk works. All transactions are publicly available for everyone via the Lisk Explorer. All payments can be made without reliance on a third party and the whole system is protected by cryptographic algorithms like those used for online banking.
Glossary
A branch is essentially a unique set of code changes with a unique name. Each repository can have one or more branches. The main branch is where all changes eventually get merged back into, and is called the master branch.
The development branch normally stores the latest work-in-progress version of the codebase, and therefore is not always considered to be stable.
Example: https://github.com/LiskHQ/lisk-sdk/branches
A complex issue that includes a checklist of smaller tasks.
For each task, a new issue is created.
Issues are a basic way to keep track of tasks, improvements, and bugs in the repository.
Each pull request needs to refer to one or more multiple issues.
If the corresponding PRs are merged, the issue can be closed.
A project's repository contains all the relevant files of a project and stores each file's revision history.
Example: https://github.com/LiskHQ/lisk-sdk
Pull requests inform the user about changes that are pushed to a branch in a repository on GitHub. Once a pull request is opened, it can be discussed and reviewed before the changes are merged into the base branch.
They are used in order to solve particular problems, and are therefore always connected to one or more issues.
A project holds all the epics, issues and PRs which are related to a particular software release. Each version has one or multiple release goals, which also consist of one or multiple epic issues.
Example: https://github.com/LiskHQ/lisk-sdk/projects
A Milestone is a 2 weeks sprint that includes sprint goals, which are generally described as a list of epic issues.
Example: https://github.com/LiskHQ/lisk-sdk/milestones
