By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 26th, 2024
Lisk decided to leverage the Ethereum network after finding out that more 90% of user transaction fees on L1 platforms were Ethereum-based.
Lisk (LISK), the open-source blockchain network and platform for decentralized applications (dApp), has announced it has decided to join the Ethereum ecosystem as a layer 2 (L2) platform. According to an official blog post, Lisk is building the upcoming ecosystem on Gelato’s Rollup, and powering it via Optimism’s OP Stack.
Why Lisk Is Integrating Ethereum
The move was born out of research carried out early this year, while trying to expand its product roadmaps. The study included deep insight into L1 and L2 landscapes. Lisk shared the research report, which found that more than 90% of transaction fees users spend on L1 chains are captured within the Ethereum network. The report reads:
“This realization led the leadership team, in Q2 of this year, to start actively looking into solutions to leverage Ethereum’s extraordinary market share in order to upgrade Lisk’s ecosystem.”
The announcement states that The Lisk Foundation will make the move next year. Explaining the decision, the blog post says that Lisk will collaborate with Base and Optimism as an early member of Optimism’s Superchain. The Superchain will allow Lisk to join a consortium of chains that share a commitment to openness and decentralization, in support of Optimism’s Law of Chains. Optimism, Lisk, Base, and other contributors hope to build better infrastructure to attract the “next 1 billion users” in Web3.
Lisk said it will deploy the L2 testnet in the first quarter of 2024 and follow that with a developer launch in the second quarter. Lisk will then launch the mainnet sometime after. The move comes with several benefits, including 90% cheaper fees for developers than on the Ethereum mainnet. In addition, the Lisk L2 will enjoy the same security on Ethereum, and will benefit from improvements on the network as it is also compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
Benefits of the Ethereum Move
The EVM compatibility will open Lisk developers to a wider range of tools for dApp building. In addition, existing EVM-based applications will also be easily deployed on Lisk. Furthermore, Lisk developers and users will have access to much higher liquidity across several thousands of tokens. Also, the move also allows users to transfer any ERC-20 token to and from Lisk’s L2.
In addition to specific benefits, Lisk touts the advantages of using the OP Stack and joining the Superchain. One of them is tackling the fragmentation created by L1 and isolated L2 chains. Users can easily interact with any applications on Optimism, Lisk, Base, or any other L2 platform part of the Superchain. There also is the benefit of joining an ecosystem with several different chains striving at a common goal.
On what happens to the Lisk L1, the project hopes to turn it into a community-driven project. The plan is for the Lisk community team (Moosty) to take over and operate under a new brand and name. For the next 2 years, the Lisk Foundation will provide financial and technical support for the L1.
“We want to highlight that we will continue to maintain the Lisk L1 and all our products until the LSK token is migrated as an ERC-20 token to Ethereum and the Moosty team [takes] over the Lisk L1 development,” the team wrote.
