Max opens the AMA:

Hello everyone, It's that time of the month again! I'm here for my monthly Ask Max Anything! I'm looking forward to some very interesting questions coming up, there are nearly 300 people online. We decided that the monthly Ask Max Anything will always be hosted here at Lisk.chat, however, the most interesting questions will be answered again by me on my YouTube channel. That's a medium I plan to flesh out more in the coming months and years.

The next few months will be very interesting for our ecosystem. Here are a few key highlights:

• Lisk.js 2021
• Lisk Core 3.0.0 Mainnet launch
• Lisk SDK 5.1.0 release
• Lisk blockchain Interoperability solution publication
• Beginning of Lisk blockchain interoperability solution implementation

And many more things, some of them not announced yet. So keep your eyes open. Fire your questions away!

huggisbart: How do you see the future of Lisk when the SDK is production ready? Now every update goes through Lisk HQ. Do you plan to somehow decentralize decision making in terms of future Lisk improvements? Do you plan to hand over it's fate to the community? If yes, what must be done first? Will everything stay open source?

Max: The Lisk SDK is already today production ready. With the Lisk SDK 5.1.0 release it will become more mainstream developer ready. The beauty of it is that it's completely modular, everyone can develop their own libraries, modules, and plugins. That means from now on everyone can develop and share functionalities they require. Exactly the same as it's common practice within the JavaScript and Node.js ecosystem from the beginning (think NPM). The Lisk SDK is essentially feature complete. From now on, it can be extended with further functionalities, examples are: further consensus algorithms or privacy features. It can also be improved with, for example, higher scalability or speed. That means the fate is not in our hands or the community's hands. It's in everyone’s hands. Whatever we build will stay open source.

Cryptdong: Hi Max. When looking at different interoperability projects like Polkadot, Cosmos and also Lisk (although Lisk is probably the least known), how would you assess the progress of these projects compared to each other? I'm not even sure when DOT and ATOM started developing but they seem to have a great head start. How do you plan to catch up?

Max: If you ignore (and please do!) our rather clumsy beginnings, then the development period for all of these three projects is approximately the same.

Polkadot and Cosmos have quite a bit of help by having very experienced venture capitalists on board who helped them to steer the ship into the right direction in the beginning, while we had to find the direction ourselves. Now everything is up and running, so there are no problems anymore. That whole situation led us to become a research-first project through our Lisk Improvement Proposal process, which is running perfectly. I think by comparing them, you always have to also compare their technologies and goals. If you look purely at interoperability; Cosmos is the furthest with the released IBC, then Polkadot is the second one with their released research papers and the last it’s us with our research papers just being published at Lisk.js 2021 in spring.

If you compare usability and accessibility, Lisk is number one by far. If you compare community size and activity Polkadot is number one. So there are different comparisons you can draw. We see both Polkadot and Cosmos, as our primary competitors. We are watching and learning daily from their efforts. I don't think there is yet the need to catch up in terms of technology.

Polkadot is not ready yet as well and I see them as the more serious competitor. However, in terms of building a community of developers I would say that the audience of JavaScript and Rust developers is very different. Also for companies and enterprises it's very attractive to not require a rehire of Rust developers and simply re-use the existing JavaScript developers.

Furthermore, the Polkadot ecosystem only supports a limited amount of sidechains to be hooked up. That's very limiting, as it's quite a low number. However, it's still very early days for the blockchain industry. I think what matters in the end is the SDK which is the most easy to use. Let's see, the battle is on.

baboon: Hello Max. 1. During one of the previous AMAs you’ve mentioned about an acquisition of some kind and said that will be announced soon. When do you think it will be right for you to reveal that whatever it is?

2. Our American friends are having hard times buying LSK tokens from exchanges with adequate liquidity. Could you please let us hear your thoughts about Coinbase covering Lisk? Have you ever approached them or have they ever to you?

3. Is it possible at least to say that the Lisk spring event will happen in April or can it be postponed to a later month? Thank you very much for your time.

Max:
1. It will be revealed weeks before the Lisk.js event.

2. I have met Brian before in New York City during Consensus. However, we never discussed the listing of LSK on Coinbase as it was far too early. I'll travel to California next week and will see what we can do to get listed on more American exchanges. I think for Coinbase it's a bit too early for us. However, there are other possibilities. Just today I noted down the business development task of acquiring a US legal opinion for the LSK token, which is mandatory for many exchange listings in the US. So it's work-in-progress.

3. We will publish the date of Lisk.js this month. It will be briefly after April to time it better with our on-going development efforts.

ducktank: "I think for Coinbase it's a bit too early for us." Do you mean before Core 3.0 on the mainnet or overall?

Max: Definitely before Lisk Core 3.0.0. Afterwards with our interoperability solution published, the sky's the limit. Let's see if we can convince them. In terms of their listing pipeline I guess they have quite a few projects, which make sense for them to list before us, in the process already.

Season 2: When can you implement the feature in Lisk wallet to export the historical transaction with multiple different time zones for local tax return calculation?

Max: For now we are working with full capacity on Lisk Desktop 2.0.0 to bring Lisk Core 3.0.0 to the Mainnet. Afterwards, we still have to implement a few features which we skipped to deliver Lisk Desktop 2.0.0 faster. Once that's done, we are working on new features. Such a CSV export feature was already tested before in Lisk Service. It's on the roadmap to be fully implemented after Lisk Service 0.3.0 is released. So you can expect it this year.

anonimowy891: Lisk.js will be an online or live event?

Max: Lisk.js will happen on the big stage but will be entirely live-streamed for the audience, let's all stay safe!

Splatters: Hi Max, is it planned when the marketing is going to kick in? And what the company you chose will do to promote the Lisk ecosystem? It is still nothing about Lisk as a client of that company website. Is it because they haven't started to promote yet?

Max: We are using Wachsman for public relations. That's not promoting Lisk, but rather connecting us with journalists and news agencies in order to distribute our announcements to the wider blockchain industry, instead of just as we've done before distributing them to the Lisk community.

Our cooperation started this month, I just came out of a call with them. Give them a few weeks to be up and running and then I assume we will see some results next month. In terms of promoting Lisk, we will tackle the topic of advertisements and paid news articles shortly. First we wanted to have the public relations side done.

Season2: What would you say is the advantage of Lisk compared with IOST?

Max: From their website: > IOST is an ultra-fast, decentralized blockchain network based on the next-generation consensus algorithm “Proof of Believability” . I'm sorry, I'm not a believer. I don't listen to Justin Bieber. I rather listen to good old classics (e.g. 80s) or German rap. Just kidding, I'm aware of the project but have no insights. So I cannot answer your question. My advice is to put the focus on Polkadot, Cosmos, and Lisk in terms of blockchain SDKs, blockchain applications and interoperability.

リスゾウ : Hi Max, Do you have any exciting announcements for this month?

Max: YEESS! There will be:

• The announcement of the date of Lisk.js 2021
• After yesterday's release of Lisk Desktop 1.28.0 we will also release Lisk Mobile 1.4.1 and a new beta for Lisk Desktop 2.0.0
• We might release a new LIP

Season2: Using the Lisk wallet, the tokens are stored on your online wallet server, correct? Would you recommend us to store the tokens to a local hard wallet from the security standpoint or no need to worry as the online wallet is totally secure?

Max: No, they are always secured through your private key on the Lisk blockchain. No matter what user interface you are using. The most important thing is that you are initializing your Lisk account. THIS IS CRUCIAL! As long as you are doing this, all your LSK are secure as long as nobody has access to your private key (passphrase). Read: https://lisk.io/blog/announcement/lisk-account-initialization

Captain_Slow: When will you publish the performance comparison for Core 3.0.0?

Max: The current plan is to publish the performance benchmark with the testnet release blog post.

Captain_Slow: How does the increase in funds affect spending, if at all?

Max: It doesn't affect our spending. We learned our lessons. There are a few open positions still to be filled. Also this year is big for us, so with Wachsman, a few paid articles/advertisements and the new Developer Program to be launched later this year, all the expenditures will go up a bit. But nothing unconventional or crazy.

Captain_Slow: When will you start the Builders program 2.0? If SDK is feature ready, why wait?

Max: The Lisk SDK is ready. However, we will announce the new Developer Program at Lisk.js. We are waiting to launch the program closer to the implementation of our interoperability solution. With this program we are striving for real production-ready blockchain applications. So they need to be launched later on on Lisk. This can only happen with the implementation of the interoperability solution.

romcsibacsi: Hi Max! What do you expect from the cooperation with Wachsman? Is there any marketing strategy already? Can you share what are the marketing channels we could follow? Will Lisk work with big companies in the near future?

Max: Marketing channels are Lisk.io and especially our blog, Twitter, Lisk.chat, Reddit, Facebook, Telegram, Blockfolio, CMC headlines (once they work), and Youtube. We expect from the cooperation with Wachsman more media coverage, more interviews, and in general more publicity for the Lisk project. The last answer I cannot answer right now, First we need to launch the blockchain application platform and the Developer program.

jk: Hello. Will there be any plans to join any alliances or have any institutions involved or will this be completely community driven? Also, someone asked about Cosmos and DOT having a head start, we can add Solano to this list. I second this question, what is the strategy for the Lisk ecosystem to increase the value of LSK?

Max: We are already members and sometimes founders of such associations. (Please see: https://lisk.foundation/about) This month we joined another one which will be announced later this month. The impact to be a member of such associations however is rather low. The first strategy to increase the Lisk ecosystem adoption and the value of LSK is to actually launch the Lisk blockchain application platform. Before that, everything is smoke and mirrors. We are working hard on achieving that. If you mean what we do to build hype this year, then this is in full motion already. Our channels are growing, the price is going up. So that is working, but will be intensified through the various major announcements still coming. Will be very intense until summer.

lisk89: Are you planning to come to the USA ? I feel like a lot of devs here would be really interested in learning about what they can do with Lisk. Thank you!

Max: I'm flying over to Los Angeles in one week. Happy to meet you, I might come and visit Seattle for a weekend. I'll be in the US for about one month and will gauge the developer communities and blockchain community there. From these learnings I'll see what we can do to increase our efforts in the USA. We will begin with a US legal opinion on the LSK token; this is the proper way. This effort has just started.

OHweeeeee: Will we have to wait for sidechain interoperability before sidechains can be deployed to production? If not, how will LSK tokens transfer from mainchain to sidechains for paying fees?

Max: Yes, we will have to wait for interoperability to use interoperability. Blockchain applications can be built today. However, they cannot be connected to the Lisk network and blockchain yet.

Captain_Slow: "If you compare usability and accessibility, Lisk is number one by far." What makes you say this and if you can make a case for such a strong statement why is this not reflected in the number of developers involved (size of community)

Max: We are inspecting Polkadot and Cosmos carefully in order to see what we can improve. I know people who were familiar with the Lisk SDK and gave the Polkadot SDK a try. They reported the same back to us. In terms of developer adoption the developer experience doesn't matter too much in the early days. I think hype is more important here. Look at Ethereum, according to many (I don't have experience here!) it's still a horror to develop Solidity smart contracts. Still, the Ethereum community has the biggest number of blockchain developers by far. However, the developer experience will matter GREATLY in the long-run. Especially for businesses.

chocoblocko: What is the intended treasury strategy? Will you keep it all in BTC, or do you use yourselves buying back any LSK in the future?

Max: The current strategy is to keep our assets mainly allocated in BTC and always have a 1 year run-way in fiat. There is another Lisk Foundation board meeting this month, if our strategy changes we will let the community know.

Cryptoism: Hi Max. Do you have any plan to make the Lisk ecosystem bigger by adding new projects? I would like to hear about new projects that are developing on the Lisk blockchain. I suggest you start hackathons in different fields to encourage more developers to contribute to the lisk project, fields like Defi, DEX, NFT markets, Oracles, Decentralized clouds, etc.

Max: Yes. (We are taking your input for hackathons into account.)

airman: Hello. Max, I am trying to be aware of the evolution of the market. Right now, pumps and dumps together with "great megalomaniac ideas" don't work anymore, or at least it won't work in the long term. I see that crypto needs to have a real world application.

Many projects are doing research and partnerships with companies that are applying real products for general people or specific companies that see an advantage from some cryptographic ideas. E.g.: Dash with retail stores for payments. IOTA for transferring data with no fees. Timing is something that you can't leave apart as obviously in a highly competitive market, first is the best. Do you have a plan or a specific set of dates for releases according to Lisk roadmap?

If yes, is there any problem showing it? If no, why are you promoting something that has not been released or don't know when it will be released.

Max: We have a specific set of dates for release, yes. However, one of our early mistakes was to try to give a timeline. That's impossible and we will never do that again. Further, you are right. It was a mistake of me to allow promotions to happen in the early days of the Lisk project. When I took over the Marketing department beginning of last year, I stopped this and we went into the shadows, worked hard and are now shortly before delivering. That means we can step out into the light again in order to build excitement and hype for our platform. That's essential to attract developers into our ecosystem.

Jeevanio: How do you see Cardano as a competitor of Lisk?

Max: I think they have the strongest research background in the entire industry, which is great as it's helping everyone a lot! I think nobody will want to develop in Haskell and Cardano will be a false promise. I hope I'm wrong, let's see. Wishing Charles all the best! With billions in the bank (from what I can see) they have all the means to deliver something great.

Moket: Regards Max. Are there already activities with new potential business partners? And which business partners would then come into question after the "product" is ready?

Max: There is a lot of interest, however, we are focusing on the developer community first this year. Looking at smart contract platforms we don't see so many pre-existing businesses suddenly developing dApps. All these startups are from the ground up new. Blockchain technology after all is a disruption.

Cryptoism: I always had the vision that Lisk will be the Ring that even other chains would hang on it as offchains. Will this eventually happen by implementing interoperability possibilities? Will Lisk be the Ring that could connect all other blockchains?

Max: Yes, very likely. More details about future research efforts will be announced at Lisk.js.

VJ: Can you do an end of the year prediction for Lisk?

Max: Sure.

• Network is alive and healthy running on Lisk Core 3.x.y.
• Implementation of the blockchain interoperability solution is progressing smoothly.
• Candidates of production-ready blockchain applications appear.
• Community is much bigger than it's now, actively developing new apps, libraries, modules and plugins.
• Me, personally, I'm much more closer to the community and more vocal than before.

That's all for now. My crystal ball exploded.

liskvote: Hello! It seems to me that there is a need to sell the LSKs owned by the foundation to solve the securities problem in the US. Are you considering selling them if the price increases in the future?

Max: This shouldn't be related. If you have more insights, please add me and let me know your thoughts. We might sell them in the future, but not in the foreseeable future.

learnmath123:How can you be sure spending money on marketing/articles in 2021 won’t bring unconstrained hype and disappointment as it did in the 2017 rebranding? Is this not a real risk given that interoperability still isn't released? What made you make the determination to go with marketing before interoperability is production-ready? Thank you Max for the hard work.

Max: You are right! We are treating everything very carefully. However, this time around it will not take 3-4 years. It's possible to sustain hype until 2022. I think this year and next year are crucial, so we need to get started sooner than later. And to launch the hype machine takes a few months to heat up anyways.

ZENSE: Is Lisk going to be listed on new exchanges?

Max: Likely. Most important for now is to launch Lisk Core 3.0.0. We will contact exchanges again only after the hard fork.

Season2: Question about the performance. If I’m not wrong, even though there’s a problem on the sidechain, it won’t affect the mainnet. On the other hand, if the mainnet has a problem (flood network latency issue etc), will it affect the sidechain apps?

Max: You are right. Sidechains will not be affected if one chain has a problem, this is valid for all chains including the mainchain. The only case is that if the mainchain has a problem it cannot process cross-chain transactions to the sidechain. That means only tokens already on the sidechain can be used to pay the blockchain fees. So there could be token trades facilitated on the sidechain, to make sure everyone can still use the blockchain application's functionalities.

VJ: Hi Max, how do you see Lisk within 1 and 2 years?

Max: Please refer to my crystal ball predictions above. I think at the end of 2022 Lisk will be a very strong and powerful candidate to develop blockchain applications.

deluxe: Does Lisk support TypeScript?

Max: Yes. The Lisk SDK (and therefore Lisk Core) is written in TypeScript.

..-..: Hi Max, will Telegram become an official Lisk chat in the near future? I believe Telegram is more widely used and is therefore far more easy approachable for new people that are entering the crypto market. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think we can expect people to go and use Discord next to all apps they already use, just to get accurate Lisk chat and announcements? Wonder what your thoughts are.

Max: Telegram is just good for quick chats but not meaningful discussions. Discord will remain the main channel. Telegram was revived by myself being active there sometimes. No bigger plans than that.

ZENSE: Thanks for answering Max. Is this the first hard fork ever?

Max: We had hard forks before already. In the early days there were multiple. I'm not sure if Lisk Core 1.0.0 introduced a hard fork as well, it's too long ago. Lisk Core 2.0.0 definitely did.

Max: Okaaaaay everyone! That's a wrap! I hope you enjoyed my answers. I'll see which questions I'll pick to answer in the next four weeks on my soon-to-be-created YouTube channel. Thank you for supporting Lisk. It's really a pleasure working on the project and talking to you on a daily basis.

Thanks to everyone in the community for their participation in the live AMA on Lisk.chat.

Lisk has embarked on an exciting mission to enable developers to create decentralized, efficient, and transparent blockchain applications. Stay up to date and join us on:

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