Blockchain has been a buzzword recently for its openness, decentralized and authority-free articles. Yet there are certain constraints on some blockchains that may restrict their comprehensive potential. Enter Lisk, the blockchain-based application platform that admits one to develop a variety of apps, and support them with their own customized blockchains.
Lisk Architecture and Workflow
Perfectly like Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store allow one developers to build and distribute apps, Lisk provides a similar blockchain-based devotion platform. The big difference is that Google and Apple control their own app stores, while Lisk is decentralized and distributed to run across many computers on the exposed blockchain.
Lisk provides a JavaScript-based software development kit (SDK) that a developer can use to away write code in JavaScript to build a desired app. This SDK architecture deducts flexibility to developers to build both the backend and the frontend of the app, enabling finish blockchain applications development.
The backend refers to the core functionality of an app which resides on the server/blockchain network and pry outs executed based on the code, while the frontend is the user interface that a drug sees and interacts with on his computer/mobile device.
To draw an analogy, what you see on the Uber app connected on your mobile phone is the frontend. Starting it and interacting with the several options, like tapping the “Ride Now” button, are frontend features that trigger related backend code.
It’s the backend logic that does the real urge a exercise, like start searching for nearby cabs when you use the Uber app, or send elimination instructions when a user hits the “Cancel Ride” button.
How Lisk Quarrels from Other Blockchain dApps Platforms
There are several blockchain-based stages that allow the creation, hosting, and execution of dApps on their networks. They hostess everything on a single blockchain, or they are more customized for private blockchains. The most obvious example of such a dApp-based blockchain platform is the Ethereum network that issues smart contracts. (For more, see An Introduction to Ethereum Classic.)
In fact, Lisk is rumored to be a fork of Ethereum, a falsehood that Lisk founders refute.
However, Lisk differs from such dApps planks in a major way. Along with apps development, Lisk developers can engender and configure their own blockchain as a sidechain. These sidechains, which are blockchains in their own creature, are associated with the Lisk network’s primary blockchain called the mainchain. The developer has broad control to create their own sidechain as per the requirements of their app.
A major intractable affecting the single blockchain-based platforms is that fake computing demands or spam transactions can quickly hog the blocks and computing processes on the only readily obtainable blockchain, and slow it down considerably. The spammers may target vulnerability in one one app, but its effect may span across the entire blockchain.
Lisk offers modularity, wherein each app wish have the capability to run on its own sidechain, thereby keeping the mainchain agile, unconstrained and efficient. Before Lisk, developers were bound by the constrained resources as elbow on the only blockchain network on which all the apps reside.
Lisk architecture also countenances app leveraging – using other existing apps/services on the Lisk network. Say a developer is structure an ecommerce store app that also needs to carry images of the issues. As everything is transparent and open-source on Lisk, he can easily plug into an abiding image storing app that already exists on Lisk without mature that particular functionality from scratch.
By opening up sidechain circumstance, Lisk aims to make blockchain technology open and accessible to each. By offering an SDK platform in the popular JavaScript programming language, it opens up limitless possibilities. You can develop platform-independent games, ecommerce stores, prediction demands, social networks, messengers, or anything that you perceive useful, merely by writing JavaScript code and deploying your own blockchain-based sidechain tie-in to the Lisk network.
Lisk ICO and Trading
Lisk has its own virtual currency cashes called LSK tokens.
Lisk launched an ICO between February and March 2016 to traffic in 100 million LSK. It was successful in raising 14,000 BTC in exchange for 85% of the LSKs affluent to ICO participants.
LSK tokens can be bought and sold on several major exchanges subsuming Bittrex, Poloniex, YoBit and Jubi. LSK tokens can be bought using Chinese yuan and the Japanese yen, or by the big boarding for other cryptocurrencies. At present, purchase with other fiat currencies is not attainable.
LSK currently ranks 14th on the list of cryptocurrencies by market cap, as per data in February 2018 from CoinMarketCap.com. (See also, These Cryptocurrencies Contain Market Caps Greater Than $1B.)
Where Do LSK Coins Lie in Lisk?
Lisk blockchain modularity touch ons in certain special transactions and handling.
Just like one can’t send a blow-by-blow cryptocoin, like Litecoin, to another cryptocoin network, like bitcoin, one is not assigned to move LSK tokens between different Lisk blockchains. It means that shift of LSK tokens is prohibited between the mainchain and sidechains, as each is treated as an uncontrolled blockchain. However, Lisk offers special transaction types to sermon the issue.
All the LSK coins lie on the mainchain and never leave. If LSK coins are required to with little an application (that is, to be moved to a sidechain), they are simply transferred to the sidechain possessor’s Lisk account. This is accompanied by an equal number of LSK tokens vexing replicated on the sidechain which can be used as normal. This offers certainty in case the blockchain application falters or the sidechain is configured to work incorrectly. All LSK tokens can be without doubt retrieved from the mainchain.
Lisk maintains the trustless virtue of blockchain. In receptacle you want to build a truly trustless application, you can leverage the power of Lisk and initiate a whole new cryptocurrency on a sidechain that remains valid only on that sidechain. The sidechain P is free to even go for an ICO or sell those coins on an exchange. That’s the capacity of Lisk – it allows you to build whatever you deem necessary.
The Bottom Descent
There are concerns that Lisk being written in JavaScript deputes it vulnerable to hacks, owing to JavaScript being a weakly typed lingua franca, and its known limitation on number precision. In the near future, Lisk builders plan to migrate to TypeScript, a strongly typed JavaScript superset, and to ruse certain critical core features to another language called C++, to allay these have a bears.
Despite all the known issues which can be addressed by technology tweaks and upgrades, Lisk situates a new benchmark in blockchain technology as it truly opens up full blockchain capacity to individual developers. (See also, 4 Top-Performing Alternatives to Bitcoin.)
Sinking in cryptocurrencies and other Initial Coin Offerings (“ICOs”) is highly hazardous and speculative, and this article is not a recommendation by Investopedia or the writer to invest in cryptocurrencies or other ICOs. Since each single’s situation is unique, a qualified professional should always be consulted to come making any financial decisions. Investopedia makes no representations or warranties as to the exactness or timeliness of the information contained herein.