Why I like LISK as infrastructure crypto (a little) more than STRAT, EOS, IOTA...
When I look at crypto currencies to invest in I ask myself if a coin's purpose is to be used as payment option (I have my own opinion on that) or as infrastructure for the present (can be used right now) or future applications (IoT), how its technical implementation is handled and what their team looks like. In that respect LISK is definitely an infrastructure coin I have a good feeling about for the future.
Advantages of LISK
- LISK uses the popular programming language JavaScript which a lot of web developers already use and its adoption is growing at an amazing speed. This will allow developers to more easily integrate Lisk into their project that is most probably already using React, Angular, NodeJS, etc. – their learning curve will not be steep. A lot of development moves towards web applications nowadays as it is a lot easier to get into, build and deploy.
- Sidechains: your own applications are running on a compatible chain next to the main chain, i.e. when something goes wrong the main chain is not affected in terms of security and speed. This also gives you a tremendous amount of freedom and flexibility.
- The web and app wallet just has a simple mnemonic passphrase (optionally secured by a second one for 5 LSK which I highly recommend), no need to handle private keys. As with STEEM you can just use the web interface to use your coins, no need to download a wallet.
- Their idea of building an app store of dApps is great and if they execute well this could become a very easy way to use the blockchain for all kinds of apps, even for non-crypto-nerds. You also don't need to download a client like you do for ETH with Mist.
- LISK already partners with Microsoft Azure in their BaaS (Blockchain-as-a-service) platform to enable developers to easily build and deploy apps, once their platform is mature other partners like Heroku, AWS, Digital Ocean, etc. could give this a lot of traction.
Programming Language Distribution
From my perspective and background in development over the years something like LISK is simply a technology that you could use today and easily integrate into your already working web apps. No need to learn C# (Stratis), C++ (EOS), Solidity (ETH) or handle a completely different ledger method (IOTA uses Tangle).
Risks of Lisk
- One potential risk for Lisk might be that if Facebook or Google come out with their own "blockchain framework" people will flock to use them instead, also the web framework / web app technology is changing so fast (JQuery then Angular then React next to vue.js, meteor.js, ember.js, etc.). We have seen that in the past with JQuery devs moving to Angular and shortly after to React. Who knows what "the" thing will be in 1,2,3... years time.
- Amazon is well-known to provide all needed services in their AWS offering and once you use their infrastructure it is pretty hard and time-consuming to move out of it again (for ex. things like their Dynamo DB is not compatible with other NoSQL databases, or, CloudSearch not compatible with their product elasticsearch). Developers would just enable another service in AWS and use this instead.
- Like with any project, development activity and community size is critical. If you compare LISK to CMS solutions it needs to be either WordPress, Drupal or Joomla. Only if there are enough people using and improving it, the platform will have a superior technical quality and succeed in the long run.
That being said doesn't mean that I don't think STRAT, EOS or IOTA don't have a bright future. I think the market is big enough and it has been already proven in the past with different database technologies, operating systems, etc.
What I cannot currently grasp is how many use cases there are for a blockchain system on a low-level programming language and how many there are for web-like applications.
Sources:
I'm curious what the next months will bring. I don't hold a huge amount, but enough to be happy if it takes off. Ark is also interesting for lisk supporters. Very similar and a more useful wallet in my opinion.
Nice article. Same thoughts here. You read this stories about people selling their cars to buy cryptos and I think to myself: Don't invest money you don't have. I was researching a way to do better investment analysis on the current cryptos. I really advice people to take a look at: https://www.coincheckup.com The site lets you check all there is to know about the team, product, communication transparency, advisors and investment statistics on every crypto. Check for example: https://www.coincheckup.com/coins/Lisk#analysis To check Lisk Report
Good analysis. The Google and Amazon are giants that might be the biggest risk to them. I would choose ethereum to avoid the big risk.