LISK is a crypto-currency lead by Max Kordek, crypto-currency enthusiast and entrepreneur, and Oliver Beddows, a full stack developer with over 15 years experience in developing web based e-commerce applications.

We had the chance to interview Max Kordek.

About the Team

As mentioned in the introduction, the team is composed of Max Kordek (CEO) and Oliver Beddows (CTO)

Max Kordek is a student at the RWTH Aachen University (Germany). He learned about Bitcoin three years ago and since then he’s fascinated by the power of the Blockchain. Before LISK, he joined the Crypti Foundation (September 2014) and have been very involved in Nxt.

I [Max] presented Nxt on conferences, moderated the Nxt forum and maintained Nxt.org for quite some time. A few days ago I left the Nxt community in order to fully concentrate on Lisk.

On his side, there’s Oliver Beddows, a full stack developer who also joined Crypti in early 2015 as a tools developer and went on build tools such as the CryptiChain Blockchain Explorer and CryptiKit.

What is LISK?

LISK is a platform for decentralized application and sidechains written in JavaScript. According to Max Kordek, LISK has been create to offer the possibility to easily deploy your own blockchain for the development of a decentralized technology or application.

I always thought that the blockchain is a powerful instrument not only for financial organisations but for everyone. Blockchains are a wonderful way to develop decentralized technologies and applications. Unfortunately, right now there is no solution on the market to easily deploy your own blockchain, which can be completely modified by yourself. Lisk offers exactly that and more. With our SDK you can not only deploy your own blockchain, with fully customizable parameters and structure. You can also develop a decentralized application (Dapp), including back end and front end. Our Dapp Store allows the fast distribution and monetisation of your Dapp. Thinking long-term our Dapp Store can even be an alternative for already existing App Stores. My motivation behind Lisk is to provide a blockchain solution to every JavaScript developer in the world. For me it doesn’t matter for what they want to use the blockchain for. – As an immutable database to track digital tokens in games. – As a communication layer for Internet of Things devices. – For unique identity control. Max Kordek, CEO

One week into their Initial Coin Offering (ICO) has already raised over 1200 Bitcoins, totaling around 500 000 $ USD. As shown by the team in a past update , all coins collected during the ICO are stored in a 2-of-3 multi-signature vault on Coinbase. 2 of the keys are held in escrow.

People can utilize ShapeShift technology, Crypti coins (XCR) or Bitcoin to participate to the ICO.

The Initial Coin Offering (ICO) will end on March 21st.

Why is it important to you for all Lisk related projects and sources to be open source?

Not only Lisk related projects and sources should be open source. Every software should be. Being open source doesn’t mean that companies can’t create money with its software. It just means that their users are more secure and know exactly what they are running. Looking at Lisk we are handling digital tokens (called “LISK”) worth real money. If people now transfer their tokens into a custom blockchain to use them in a decentralized application, they shouldn’t be at risk. This can only be guaranteed with open source software.

Can you tell us more about the current development of Lisk? Will you be able to release everything at the end of ICO as planned?

Sure, we are already actively developing Lisk. I’m working on an interactive user guide within the client, to give first time users a good experience. Oliver is currently making changes to the Dapp storage method. At Crypti it was possible to use Sia or GitHub (via SSH) to store the Dapp source code. In our opinion these options were not practical and to complicated for our users. That’s why we remove these methods and start with an easy .zip link at which the Dapp source code is available. Later on we will implement IPFS as a decentralized alternative. Every day we receive far more enquiries from our users than we anticipated. However, we are on track and working hard. We think the launch will be a huge success for Lisk. There are still a few things we will release before Lisk officially launches. Stay tuned!

What were your anticipation when you launched Lisk? Are you satisfied about Lisk popularity or you thought it would have a bigger community at this point of the ICO?