## What Is Lisk (LSK)?

[Lisk](https://lisk.com) is striving to on-board 100,000,000 users into crypto and web3 by offering an accessible blockchain application platform and an industry leading JavaScript SDK.

Released in 2019, the Lisk SDK enables developers to build application-specific blockchains entirely in JavaScript, the most widely used programming language in the world. To get a deep-dive into the Lisk SDK, please visit the [Lisk SDK documentation](https://lisk.com/documentation/lisk-sdk/index.html) or watch [Lisk.js 2019](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLixm1arf_lEy1IK3AQiKK_J0hdO9rGc30) and [Lisk.js 2022](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLixm1arf_lExhMdtyoH5Ku9wuUKWTL_v6).

To be released in 2022, the Lisk blockchain application platform allows interoperability between all application-specific blockchains built with the Lisk SDK. With other words, users will be able to use DeFi, NFT or Metaverse blockchain applications on Lisk.

To better understand why Lisk is important watch the following videos: [The Case for Lisk](https://youtu.be/tpsHK2T-F8c) and [The Ultimate Vision for Lisk](https://youtu.be/Z29ikkzzvlo).

If you are curious about Lisk’s history and journey, watch [Looking Back on Lisk](https://youtu.be/qt3cuNjw2Yo).

The Lisk project is managed by the Lisk Foundation, a non-profit entity based in Zug, Switzerland. A local team of experts specialized in law and finance, as well as yearly audits, ensure the proper handling of funds and regulatory compliance under the supervision of the Swiss Federal Foundation Supervisory Authority (ESA, Eidgenössische Stiftungsaufsicht).  

The Lisk products are developed by the Lightcurve GmbH, a Berlin based blockchain studio. With a team of over 40 blockchain experts, Lightcurve is researching, developing and promoting the Lisk SDK and the Lisk blockchain application platform.


## What Makes Lisk Unique?

### Accessibility

Accessibility is part of the Lisk vision. Lisk believes that not only technical people or the elite should have access to crypto and web3, but everyone in the world. This vision flows through everything Lisk is doing and into their products.

### Proven & established

Founded in 2016, Lisk is one of the oldest crypto projects in existence. The team has proven to diligently and consistently work on the project with one of the [highest development activity](https://cryptomode.com/top-4-crypto-projects-ranked-by-90-day-developer-activity/) in the industry and [high funding](https://lisk.com/blog/tags/financial-update) to last for many years ahead.

### Application-specific chains

Instead of relying on smart contracts, developers are implementing their blockchain applications natively on their own blockchain with the Lisk SDK. This prevents scalability issues and high fees, however maintains composability thanks to interoperability.

### JavaScript

Instead of using archaic and niche or new and unproven programming languages, the Lisk SDK is fully written in JavaScript tapping into the biggest pool of developers globally.


## How Is the Lisk Network Secured?

Lisk is secured through an environmentally friendly and highly efficient [Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) consensus algorithm](https://lisk.com/blog/research/3-new-dpos-lips-changing-voting-system-lisk) and finality guaranteeing [BFT protocol](https://lisk.com/blog/research/introducing-byzantine-fault-tolerance-consensus-lisk). Without the need for miners the electricity consumption of the entire network is kept to a minimum while ensuring high-throughput and security.

Industry-leading [development standards and test coverage](http://github.com/LiskHQ/) at Lisk ensures smooth operation since the launch of the network on May 24th, 2016. [Regular third party security audits](https://lisk.com/blog/development/external-security-audit-lisk-sdk-5.0.0-and-lisk-core-3.0.0) bring further trust and reputation.

Inspect the Lisk network on Lisk’s blockchain explorers:

- [LiskScan.com](https://liskscan.com/network) 
- [Lisk.Observer](https://lisk.observer/network)


## How Many Lisk (LSK) Coins Are There in Circulation?

In 2016 at the time of the [Lisk ICO](https://lisk.com/blog/announcement/lisk-ico-terms) the Lisk blockchain started with 100,000,000 LSK at a market value of $5,800,000. Approximately 6 years later, in February 2022, there are around 140,000,000 LSK available at a market value of $240,000,000. This represents an over 40x return, given the LSK token price now.

At launch, only 8% of the initial LSK token supply went to the Lisk co-founders, which is at the lower end of today’s standards.

Today, the annual inflation rate of the LSK token is only about 2% which is one of the industry’s lowest rates.


## Who Are the Founders of Lisk?

Lisk was founded by Max Kordek and Oliver Beddows.

[Max Kordek](https://twitter.com/maxkordek) is the CEO of Lisk and a globally recognized crypto entrepreneur. At just 24 years old, Max co-founded Lisk and raised over 14,000 BTC during its ICO in 2016 and within the same year co-founded Lightcurve, a leading blockchain studio based in Berlin. Since then, Max has become increasingly involved in the global crypto community, speaking at many of the top blockchain conferences in the world. Today, he is working relentlessly to help the industry gain traction.

[Oliver Beddows](https://twitter.com/karmacrypto) is the CTO of Lisk and a veteran crypto developer since 2014. Together with Max, he co-founded Lisk and developed it to be a go-to platform for JavaScript developers and also co-founded Lightcurve, a leading blockchain studio in Berlin. Since then, Oliver is introducing revolutionary blockchain innovations and is deeply committed to make the world a better place with the technologies he builds.


## Where Can You Buy Lisk (LSK)?

Lisk and the LSK token are widely accessible on the most popular exchanges on the market.
The top exchanges to buy the Lisk token are:

- [Binance](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/binance/)
- [Kraken](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/kraken/)
- [Upbit](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/upbit/)
- [Huobi](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/huobi-global/)
- [Zonda](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/zonda/)
- [Bitflyer](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bitflyer/)

It is important to consider the fact that investing in crypto carries risk, just like any other investment.

If you’re struggling to find a LSK trading pair with your local currency, check out this [guide](https://coinmarketcap.com/how-to-buy-bitcoin/) on how to convert fiat into Bitcoin - giving you a gateway to buying LSK.

Lisk

Ledger

Atomic wallet

Qtum (pronounced ‘“quantum”)  is a proof-of-stake (PoS) smart contract open-source blockchain platform and value transfer protocol. It aims to bring together the strengths of Bitcoinand Ethereumin one chain. Qtum is built on Bitcoin's UTXO transaction model, with the added functionality of smart contract execution and DApps. Recently, the platform added support for DeFi applications. As of March 2021, there are more than 20 tokens created on the Qtum blockchain.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Qtum.

The project was announced in March 2016 and held an ICO a year after, in March 2017, which brought its founders $15 million USD. The Qtum main chain was released on Sept.13, 2017. Initially, the Qtum coin was issued as a ETH-20 token, but with the launch of the mainnet, it was converted to native blockchain.

Qtum

Apps use ICON to operate cross-chain seamlessly, build momentum and gain reputation. ICON's Cross-Chain Framework simplifies cross-chain development with its easy-to-use xCall messaging standard and connections to secure bridging protocols.

ICON

Ontology is a project designed to bring trust, privacy, and security to Web3 through decentralized identity and data solutions. It is building the infrastructure to provide trusted access to Web3, allowing individuals and enterprises to rest assured that through regulatory compliant digital identity solutions, users and their privacy come first.

The Ontology blockchain is a high speed, low cost public blockchain. It is designed to bring decentralized identity and data solutions to Web3, with the goal of increasing privacy, transparency, and trust. To achieve this, users and enterprises are provided with the flexibility to build blockchain-based solutions that suit their needs, while also ensuring regulatory compliance. Through Ontology’s Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), Ontology ensures frictionless compatibility with Ethereum, the first step in the creation of the Ontology Multi-Virtual Machine and further interoperability for the chain.

At its launch, Ontology chose to forego the popular initial coin offering (ICO) model in favor of a series of community distributions and airdrops of its ONT cryptocurrency.

This helped to quickly establish both organic price discovery and a passionate community and helped the project to avoid subsequent regulatory scrutiny.

For example, for a brief period any person who signed up for the Ontology newsletter received an airdrop of free 1,000 ONT, which reached a value of $10 per token soon after the token became listed on major exchanges like Binance.

Ontology launched its own MainNet on June 30, 2018 and has been up and running smoothly since.

Ontology

Billed as "digital money for the modern world," nano is a lightweight cryptocurrency that is designed to facilitate secure, practically instant payments, without fees, and addresses some of the major limitations of both legacy financial infrastructure, and many modern cryptocurrencies.

Development of the project began in 2014 under the name RaiBlocks, and the coin (then termed XRB) launched the following year through a public faucet, which allowed users to claim small amounts of XRB after completing a captcha challenge. Anyone with access to a computer or phone could solve captchas, and be rewarded with RaiBlocks. The number of XRB people received per solved captcha varied over time

RaiBlocks (XRB) was rebranded to Nano in January 2018, with the new name chosen to better represent the speed and simplicity the project offers to users.

It is a peer-to-peer platform that uses a unique block-lattice data structure to allow users to easily transfer value to one another without relying on centralized intermediaries.

Unlike other platforms which typically use the combined proof-of-work of a massive mining network to achieve consensus, nano instead uses a system known as Open Representative Voting (ORV) — which sees account holders vote for their chosen representative, who then work to confirm blocks of transactions securely.

ORV makes Nano extremely energy efficient, positioning it as a more environmentally friendly alternative to proof-of-work (POW)-based cryptocurrencies.

In November, 2021, aiming to bring nano to the real world and to comply with the globally-recognized standards of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) requirements, nano adopted a new ticker and a standard symbol: XNO and Ӿ.

Nano

Steem is a community-focused blockchain that creates an instant earning opportunity for the network’s users. The protocol is designed to provide an earning opportunity for customers based on their value to the network. It is designed to provide users with a platform where they can post curated content online, and get paid in cryptocurrency.

The protocol is a publicly available, incentivized blockchain database that allows users to interact with each other and earn in return. It leverages technologies from both social media and cryptocurrency to provide users with value. The network ensures the fair treatment of contributors by running a reward structure that reflects each user’s contribution.

Steemit is the first app that was built on the Steem blockchain, and it launched on July 4, 2016. The protocol aims to provide value for its community of users in the following ways:

To provide thoughtfully chosen news and commentaries.

Creating an opportunity to earn.

As a source that offers answers to users’ inquiries.

Offering a stable cryptocurrency pegged to the USD.

Steem

Ontology Gas

NEM is a blockchain platform that was launched in March of 2015. It was one of the pioneers of the cryptocurrency industry, and sought to improve on the imperfections found on other chains at the time. It was one of the first non-turing complete chains to feature user-defined tokens (called mosaics), namespaces, multisignature accounts, and a P2P reputation system based on EigenTrust++. Its most notable contribution to the space is the proof-of-importance consensus mechanism, which sought to reward on-chain activity and deter the concentration of wealth commonly associated with proof-of-stake. Its client, NIS, is written in Java.

NEM has a global community. It sees the most utility as an alternative form of payment for businesses and vendors, and has a variety of social media apps built on top of it in Japan, such as nemgraph, a community-driven owned and operated alternative to Instagram.

In December 2021, NEM was hard forked by a pseudonymous team of cryptocurrency experts and enthusiasts alike. Titled Harlock, this hard fork signaled the community’s intent to take NEM from a shadow of its former self into the world’s leading payments platform for on-chain and off-chain media content.

Ardor

Civic is a blockchain-based identity management solution that gives individuals and businesses the tools they need to control and protect personal identity information.

The platform is designed to change the way we think about identity verification by giving users more control over their personal data, while allowing them to access a wide range of services without needing to fork over excessive amounts of personal information.

Civic's identity verification solution uses distributed ledger technology to authorize identity usage in real time, and is used to sparingly share information with Civic partners after authorization by the user.

Unlike some other identity management services, Civic users store all their sensitive data on their mobile device. Users are able to authorize the sharing of specific personal data by providing a biometric signature through the Civic app.

The Civic ecosystem is enabled by a unique utility token known as the Civic token (CVC), which is used for the settlement of identity-related transactions between Civic participants — such as between a customer and service provider.

Users can earn CVC tokens for completing a variety of tasks, such as signing up for a service through the platform or introducing new users, while validators can earn CVCs for validating documents for service providers.

Civic was launched in 2018, following a sell-out initial coin offering (ICO) the year prior.

Civic

OMG Network, formerly known as OmiseGo, is a non-custodial, layer-2 scaling solution built for the Ethereum blockchain. As an Ethereum scaling solution, OMG Network is designed to allow users to transfer ETH and ERC20 tokens significantly faster and cheaper than when transacting directly on the Ethereum network.

The network is based on a novel scaling solution called MoreViable Plasma, which uses a sidechain architecture to group several transactions off-chain into a batch, which can then be verified as a single transaction on the Ethereum root chain. According to OMG Network, this technology has the potential to scale Ethereum to thousands of transactions per second (TPS) — instead of the 10 to 14 tps Ethereum 1.0 is currently capable of.

The network is powered by the OMG utility token, which can be used as one of the payment methods for fees on the OMG Network, and will eventually be stakable — helping to secure the network in return for rewards.

OMG Network

Bancor is an ecosystem of decentralized, open-source protocols that promote on-chain trading and liquidity.

Its main protocol, Carbon, is a decentralized trading protocol allowing users to perform automated trading strategies using custom on-chain limit orders and range orders, with the option of combining orders together to create automated buy low, sell high strategies.

By design, Carbon orders are irreversible on execution, easily adjustable directly on-chain, and resistant to MEV sandwich attacks. These capabilities give users an unprecedented level of control and automation to perform novel trading strategies on-chain.

Fast Lane, a separate open-source arbitrage protocol, allows any user to perform arbitrage between Bancor ecosystem protocols and external on-chain exchanges and redirect arbitrage profits back to the Bancor ecosystem.

All Bancor ecosystem protocols are governed by the BancorDAO via staked BNT.

Bancor

Aragon

Komodo

Status is categorized as a mobile and desktop operating system and decentralized browser that incorporates a messaging system. As such, Status allows you to interact with a network at any time, from anywhere. It was originally released in June in 2017.

It is a light client Ethereum node, and has the ability to give you access to all Ethereum decentralized applications (otherwise known as DApps) from an app that is installed on your mobile phone or tablet. This means that users can send encrypted messages as well as access decentralized applications, including a cryptocurrency wallet.

Status

aelf

Decred is Money Evolved.

By combining battle tested Proof-of-Work with an innovative take on Proof-of-Stake that places coin holders in charge of shaping the future, Decred is able to adapt to challenges and innovate at a rapid pace. You acquire influence in Decred by putting “skin in the game”.

Decred’s security, privacy, scalability, and decentralized treasury empower stakeholders and provides them with the tools needed to enhance their financial sovereignty.

Decred

Metal DAO

ZEN is the governance and utility token for Horizen, a zero-knowledge-enabled network of blockchains powered by the largest node infrastructure in the industry. Blockchain interoperability is enabled by the Zendoo protocol, which uses SNARK-verification and allows for complete flexibility in sidechain type, consensus, and speed. Cryptographic verification of networked chains offers massive scale, and the network currently supports up to 10,000 sidechains with a throughput limit of 10,000,000 TPS.

Zendoo makes Horizen a permissionless network of blockchains. Developers can deploy their blockchains within the ecosystem using a variety of SDKs. In 2023, the ecosystem team launched Horizen EON, a public proof-of-stake sidechain and an EVM-compatible smart contracting platform that allows developers to efficiently build and deploy dapps on the Horizen ecosystem, while benefiting from the Ethereum ecosystem. Since going live with Horizen EON, DeFi projects including SpookySwap, Ascent Exchange, and Yuzu have successfully integrated into the Horizen ecosystem. Get started on Horizen EON today!

Horizen's native cryptocurrency, ZEN, is a mineable PoW coin currently trading on major exchanges, including Coinbase and Binance. ZEN can be staked to participate in Horizen's nearly 50,000 full node network.

While ZEN was previously a privacy token, following ZenIP 42204 in June of 2023, the network removed its existing privacy features in favor of moving towards a vision of adaptability and responsible, scalable growth.

Horizen

Hive (HIVE) is a blockchain running on a delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism. It launched in March 2020 as a hard fork of the centralized Steem blockchain and as a gateway from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0. The blockchain claims to offer “lightning-fast processing times and fee-less transactions.” Examples of use cases include social media with monetized rewards for content creators, interactive blockchain games, identity management, micro-loans and more. The platform powers decentralized applications (dApps) like Splinterlands, PeakD and HiveBlog.

Hive is a social network of apps and services, where users discover the capacity of blockchain technology, connect to the platform and securely share content through equitable redistribution of value. Thus, the users are the proprietors of the network, and sponsors can contact communities and artists directly without intermediaries.

Hive is an open source blockchain that focuses on scaling through layer-2 sidechains, while still benefiting from a common layer-1 blockchain backbone to ensure distributed data integrity. The Hive ecosystem runs on two cryptocurrencies — the native governance token, HIVE and the USD-pegged HBD stablecoin.

Hive

IOST describes itself as an “ultra-fast,” fully fledged and decentralized blockchain network and ecosystem with its own nodes, wallets and based on the “next-generation” consensus protocol dubbed “proof-of-believability.”