Due to the open-source nature of Bitcoin and blockchain technologies, new cryptocurrencies enter the market on a regular basis offering different features than its pioneering predecessor bitcoin.One of these new cryptocurrencies is Lisk with the ticker LSK.Lisk is a decentralized network with its own blockchain that has been launched to create a blockchain that enables developers to build a wide range of apps on the Lisk network by developing custom side chains.In that sense, it has similarities to the Ethereum network.However, the Lisk blockchain has not been built with the intention to create smart contracts, but instead to develop different apps and functionalities using the Lisk App SDK framework.With the Lisk App SDK, developers are able to develop the backend of your application but also the front end.In other words, they can build functionalities for their app and the user interface using the Lisk App SDK.This enables developers to create blockchain applications in a conveniently downloadable package.

The front end (user interface) of applications can also be accessed in a decentralized way, a unique feature within the blockchain industry at present.Also, it is an open source software allowing a clear overview of what other developers are doing and thereby improving new apps and functionalities built on the Lisk network.Lisk is also a cryptocurrency and has the ticker LSK.Similarly, though Ethereum’s ether is not a cryptocurrency that is supposed to be used as a digital currency.Instead, it is the token that fuels the Lisk network and developers require them to build on the Lisk network.Lisk had its ICO (initial coin offering) earlier this year, where 100,000,000 LSK were created and distributed among early supporters, the Lisk core team, partners, advisors and ICO participants raising $5.7 million, the fourth highest crowdfund for a cryptocurrency in history.Claiming to be the world’s first modular cryptocurrency, meaning that various applications will be run on top of the Lisk core and all dApps run their own ‘sidechains’.

In this way, the Lisk team hopes to keep the ‘mainchain’ agile and Lisk itself will remain efficient.Whereas, a problem with Bitcoin is that test or fake transactions can fill up the blocks and slow the network down ‘sidechains’ offers a way to process high volume transactions without slowing down the main blockchain.Consequently, the speed of the Lisk network should continue to grow faster over time.At the time of writing this article, the value of LSK-BTC on the Poloniex exchange stands at 0.00039, near all-time lows.From a contrarian perspective, this makes Lisk an attractive buy as the relatively low price at this moment in time suggests there is less resistance to the market moving to the upside rather than the downside.Since LSK hit the exchanges on May 24th the price saw an initial jump against BTC and then steadily declined since mid-June.Recently, LSK received more investor demand and it’s price surged against BTC.This is shown above with the uptick in volumes at the beginning of August.

Currently, you can purchase LSK on a range of cryptocurrency exchanges including Poloniex, YoBit, Bloombit, Bit and Bitrex using bitcoin, ether and other cryptocurrencies.The future price performance of LSK depends solely on the success of the Lisk network and the adoption of its technology by developers, programmers, and start-ups.Lisk is not a digital currency that can be used to buy and sell goods and services.Hence, unlike bitcoin, no merchants will likely ever adopt the cryptocurrency as a means of payment.bitcoin bubble business insiderTherefore, the key drivers will be technology adoption and investor interest, with the two tending to go hand in hand in the cryptocurrency market as ether (ETH) has shown.bitcoin kurs 12 monateIf you are not averse to risky speculative investments and are familiar with the cryptocurrency markets, putting a small amount of money into LSK could potentially turn out to be a very lucrative investment.bitcoin moeda digital

Given that Lisk uses JavaScript as a programming language, which is popular among tech giants such as Microsoft and Google, the likelihood of its developer base increasing and adopting Lisk as a network to build applications on is quite high.Furthermore, Lisk has entered into a partnership with Microsoft Azure, which means that developers worldwide can develop, test, and deploy Lisk blockchain applications using Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform and infrastructure.However, there is a risk that more superior blockchains that offer similar functionalities will emerge then the price of LSK will likely drop sharply.bitcoin vat ukI would say LSK is a riskier investment than Ethereum’s ether as the demand for the development of smart contracts, especially from the financial industry, is huge.litecoin not confirmingAlso, a background in programming in necessary to fully understand the Lisk system and may be a barrier preventing some investors from getting on board.bitcoin honey badger of money

Moreover, while Lisk performs well in terms of developer participation, it is lacking in liquidity, with low trading volumes on exchanges, and needs to build a larger community around itself to generate more discussion on social media relative to more successful cryptocurrencies like bitcoin or ether.Nevertheless, the potential reward for investing now is also large; the main advantage over Ethereum is that all Lisk applications run on their own blockchains, i.e.the ‘sidechains’, which could provide an advantage in scaling to a mainstream audience.LSK as an investment will only perform well in the long run if the Lisk network becomes a leading blockchain technology for start-ups to build new apps over the next year or so, which up until now looking very promising.Ethereum, the brainchild of wunderkind software developer Vitalik Buterin, who was just 19 when he came up with the idea, is the most buzzed-about project right now in the cryptocurrency community.It has attracted an all-star team of computer scientists and raised $18.4 million in a crowdfunding campaign—the third most successful of all time.

And now, according to the official Ethereum blog, it's on the verge of being rolled out to the public.Ethereum's developers use a rolling ticker tape of bold tag lines to describe what they're creating, including a “Social Operating System for Planet Earth,” and “the Upcoming Decentralization Singularity.” Ethereum is a programming language the lives on top of a "blockchain"—a concept invented six years ago with the launch of Bitcoin.A blockchain is essentially a database that's jointly maintained on the personal hard drives of its users—sort of like a shared Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.But transactions recorded to a blockchain are time stamped, fully transparent, and protected from tampering by hackers and thieves through an ingenious system that utilizes cryptography and community consensus.Blockchains make it possible, for the first time in history, to participate in a complex marketplace without the need for a mediating third party.The blockchain is what allowed Bitcoin to become the first form of virtual money that can be exchanged without a bank serving as an intermediary.

(Read Ron Bailey's recent piece on the blockchain's transformative potential.)Ethereum is an effort to apply the blockchain to a broad range of uses, though it's not the first such attempt.Projects like Counterparty and Colored Coins have come up with clever methods of tailoring Bitcoin to facilitiate projects like a blockchain-based stock market.But Bitcoin's blockchain was designed to handle the exchange of money, and retrofitting it to other uses requires some programming jujitsu and has inherent technical limitations.Ethereum tries to solve this problem by layering a powerful programming language on top of a blockchain, giving it all the versatility that Bitcoin lacks.“If you think of Bitcoin as a decentralized version of Microsoft Excel, then Ethereum is a decentralized Excel where we’ve made the visual basic macros functional,” says Vinay Gupta, the project’s release coordinator.To expand on Gupta's analogy: With the Bitcoin blockchain, each cell on this hypothetical Excel table holds just a number; on the Ethereum blockchain, each cell is home to an entire computer program.

So what's the advantage of hosting computer programs on a blockchain?They become much cheaper to operate because no third-parties are required to oversee their operation, and they become essentially incorruptible because their functioning is fully transparent.Ethereum's developers believe their project will lead to the proliferation of programs they call "smart contracts," in which the terms of an agreement are written in code and enforced by software.These smart contracts could carry out the instructions of a complex algorithm based on data feed—such as a stock ticker.They could facilitate practically any financial transaction, such as holding money in escrow or dispersing micropayments among autonomous machines.They could be used to create a peer-to-peer gambling network, a peer-to-peer stock trading platform, a peer-to-peer social network, a prenuptial agreement, a will, a standard agreement to split a dinner check, or a public registry for keeping track of who owns what land in a city.

Gupta predicts that these smart contracts will be so cheap and versatile that they'll do "a lot of things that today we do informally," and take on a lot of the "donkey work of running a society."There won't be any big changes on the day—or year—after Ethereum is released, in part because many smart contracts will work best when the people using them keep their money in Bitcoin or other forms of programmable money.That's because the fiat money world still depends on trusted third parties.For example, a will written as a smart contract can’t be fully automated if the money to be dispersed is entirely in U.S.dollars; a banker would need to cooperate.But Gupta predicts that fairly soon we’ll move to a world in which a critical mass of people maintain a wallet with at least a few hundred dollars worth of cryptocurrency, facilitating Ethereum's rapid integration into the real economy.Ethereum-based public databases, which don't depend on widespread use of cryptocurrency, could have a more immediate impact, particularly in the developing world.