Lisk Relaunches: Latest Updates from the "Developers Blockchain"

Lisk, which has been viewed as a blockchain for developers has just completed a much talked about relaunch. This was all rolled out at a relaunch event in Berlin.

Lisk is trying to enter the space as another alternative to the Ethereum ecosystem and other ERC20 tokens. The blockchain wants to allow developers to create their own decentralised applications (dApps) yet in a language that they know well.

The event was well received and we saw at least 500 attendees as well as numerous others on livestream. This no doubt shows the great community interest that exists in Lisk and the product that they are offering.

While there were many updates to the brand image and website of Lisk, the event was also a way for the team to showcase some of the products that have been under development.

Lets take a look at some of the highlights from the relaunch.

New Logo, New Identity

The event opened up with a grand reveal of the new Lisk logo. They wanted the logo was positioned as an "amalgamation" of all of their ideas. It seems as if they opted for a flat design that was presented in an opening video.

The event then rolled onto a presentation by a brand strategist called Christian Vatter. He proceeded to explain how Lisk had discovered its new identity and how he had helped the project approach their new branding. He wanted to make sure that the Lisk message was clear to everyone who is outside of the community.

In order to make sure that he was capturing the essence of Lisk, he conducted several interviews with members of the team. He also spoke to numerous other influencers in the Blockchain and Fintech space outside of Lisk to help inform his decision.

Lastly, he wanted to hear directly from those who are likely to use Lisk, the developers. He opened up a Slack channel that allowed these developers to share views on Lisk and how they see the project going forward. This helped Christian to shape the message and land on the following unique selling point.

We enable blockchain creators.

Some Name Changes & Lisk Academy

The head of marketing at Lisk then proceeded to present some of the other changes that they have undertaken. These Lisk team decided to rename some of the core products. For example, Lisk JS has become Lisk Elements, Lisk App has become Lisk Hub and Lisky was rename Lisk Commander.

While changing the names of the product was more on the semantic side, the much more important release was that of the new website. This is the first port of call that new Lisk users will go to in order to get more information on the project.

They went through numerous aspects of the new website as well as the new Lisk Hub. Users can also expect more in the way of video content through a enhanced YouTube campaign. This will allow for a more user friendly introduction to blockchain development.

One of the more interesting presentations of the evening was that given by Jacob Kowaleski. He used the event as an introduction to the Lisk academy. This is the blockchain educational initiative of Lisk that wants to be a "one stop-shop for all things blockchain".

They have broken the Academy down into two main sections and these are Blockchain Basics and Blockchain Business. These modules have reams of content, infographics and simple animations. They claimed that the goal was making blockchain learning fun.

The academy also has plans to organise educational meetups that cater to a wide range of developers.

Progress on Technology

One of the most anticipated parts of the relaunch was no doubt the panel discussion that covered the ongoing development. This featured the Lisk co-founder and CTO, Oliver Beddows as well as Will Clark and Cryptographer Iker Alustiza.

For those who have been following the activity on Github, there has been a great deal of work done on the core product. They presented the list of statistics from the project's github page

375 merged pull requests, 323 closed issues, 36 contributors, and 3020 commits (which is more than all previous releases put together)

Beddows covered many details of Lisk Core, the primary product to Lisk. For example, some of the goals are to design and implement a new API as well as to redevelop the peer to peer transport and database layers. This will be done in order to fully support atomic block writes.

Once the core product is ready to be shipped, they will work on solutions which will allow them to place components of the core product into various modules. These will form the basis of Sidechain Development Kit (SDK). There will also be a release of a new and improved fee system which should be scalable and dynamic.

Clark then went over more specific functionality of Lisk core. For example, he discussed Lisk Elements which is the JavaScript library as well as Lick Commander. The latter will allow for a simplified commands that developers can use to interact with the Lisk network. They may also extend Lisk Elements with other particular packages for sidechains.

They also demonstrated the steps that a developer would have to take in order to develop their own dApp from inception to deployment. You can read more about the process on the Lisk product page.

Conclusion

The CEO, Max Kordek, ended the evening with a look at the company fundamentals as well as plans for Lisk expansion. The Lisk foundation currently has a valuation of CHF300 million which is really impressive for a project of this size.

The Lisk team is also greatly expanding as they try to bring on more talented staff to expand their operations. They want to double their headcount in 2018 and currently have a range of open positions on their website.

What does this mean for Lisk going forward?

The relaunch was a great way not only for Lisk to reinvent itself to a certain degree. Yet it was also to showcase the strides that are being made in development. To that point, Lisk is clearly moving ahead at full steam towards a launch of Lisk Core.

While Lisk operates in a highly competitive environment with the likes of Cardano, and EOS, it has a unique USP in its appeal to simplicity.

Whether Lisk can beat out the competition and legitimately challenge the dominance of Ethereum remains to be seen. However Lisk (LSK) investors will most likely keep a keen eye on updates over the next few months.

Featured Image via lisk.io