Ethereum (ETH) vs. Lisk (LSK)

Ethereum (ETH) has been the long-standing blockchain project that decentralized applications (DApps) have been built on top of, making it the cryptocurrency that stood out from the rest. However, new projects such as NEO and Lisk (LSK) have entered this arena and are pushing back.

A few weeks ago I covered, Ethereum vs. NEO – check it out.

The Differences between ETH & LSK?
Both of these projects are open-sourced blockchain platforms that allow the development of “smart contracts.” These contracts enable developers to build applications on top of the blockchain. Most of the Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) of the past were built on the Ethereum blockchain due to its functionality.

However, there are major differences between the two platforms.

Ethereum allows developers to program these DApps on a programming language called Solidity and Serpent. This is a new coding language made for these smart contracts and is not known to most devs and has to be learned. Lisk uses JavaScript, which is the most used coding language among developers worldwide. The team behind Lisk chose Java in hopes that developers would jump on the project due to their familiarity with the programming language. The more developers, the more value the project holds. However, many argue that due to JavaScript being a highly used and known language it could potentially cause faulty applications to be built and has the potential for fraud.

Lisk addresses this issue by adding a special feature named the SideChain. Essentially, each smart contract is built on its side chain that is linked to the entire LISK blockchain. However, if there is a fault with the smart contract, it doesn’t compromise the entire blockchain. To fix a smart contract it doesn’t require a hard fork to the entire LISK blockchain. This is what happened last year to the DAO issue with the Ethereum blockchain.

The last major difference between the two is Ethereum still runs on its “Proof of Work” (POW) consensus protocol. The development team behind Ethereum is currently in the works to change this and hopes by Q2 2018 to switch the blockchain to a “Proof of Stake“ (POS) protocol. This proof of work concept has proved to be extremely expensive and has caused various energy bans globally. With Lisk already a step ahead and running on POS, it puts the project a step ahead.

Will Lisk Pass Ethereum?
Currently, Lisk is the 14th largest cryptocurrency by market cap at $2.6 billion. From this time last year, the token has grown 14,000%.

Ethereum’s developers are hard at work hoping to fix its current scalability issue. They are about to launch their test net for their fix called “sharding,” and if this deems successful, I believe it will remain on top – above NEO and LSK. However, if the developers are slow to fix the issue, I could see either of the projects this year make a strong surge towards passing Ethereum.

This last year, ETH grew over 7,200%.

What are your thoughts?