Here are the statements Max made. I will keep updating this post while the meeting continues.
Lisk Community Meeting Summary
Our agenda is looking the following:
In the beginning we will tell you where we stand at the moment. That means we will talk a bit about:
- Testing
- Network Stability
- Current Team
From there on we progress to the work we are doing at this moment. Our current work consists of:
- Launch Date
- All necessary tasks until launch
- Marketing
Finally, we will talk a bit about future development. What you can expect of Lisk in the future.
- A few hints about our Long Term Roadmap
- Apps in Development
- Development Plan
- Core Apps
After that is done, we will transition to a traditional AMA. So you can ask all kind of questions to us. 🙂
TestingAs you know we pushed out many versions in the last few weeks within the 0.2.x branch. Many of you had problems with the fork 3 issue. With every version we released the issue got smaller. With 0.2.3 we are finally at a state at which we can launch Lisk. Before the launch we will release another Lisk client with the number 0.2.4 in order to finalise the client for launch.
We want to thank everyone who participated during the tests and if you have any specific question about it, feel free to ask us in the AMA part later in the meeting.
Network Stability
This is an extremely important part of a cryptocurrency. It needs to run 24/7. With the latest update we finally got to a point at which we can say that our network is stable enough to be released. It's not perfect yet, but we did *a lot* during the past month alone. So you can expect *major* advancements in the coming months as well. Later on I will tell you a few things about our development plan, the network stability will be an important first part of it.
The next update 0.2.4 will contribute a lot more to network stability. It will be the final version we release at launch as 0.3.0.
Network Stability -> Stress testing
In terms of network stability I also want to point out that we successfully stress tested the network. We included a lot of transactions into the blocks, which are currently artificially limited to 25 transactions per block. The network survived. 🙂 So after we enhanced and optimised our code more, we can also increase the maximum transaction limit.
Transactions per block
This is important in order to be more secure from attacks. The more transactions a block can contain, the more expensive an attack becomes. In terms of transaction load of the network with 25tx/block, we are already at a point at which we could support a lot more users than there are right now. 🙂
Developers
As you know we recently hired @fixcrypt and @isabella. They are a huge help for us and are contributing greatly. We are very happy that we took this step before launch. Now that the launch is coming closer every minute, I want to make clear that we will begin to scout new developers shortly after launch. For that purpose we created an extra page on our website:
https://lisk.io/careersThis is our current status on development progress, network stability, testing, and hiring. We have added a lot to Lisk since we began our journey early January. We have come a long way, but this is just the beginning.
Thanks to our extremely active community there are issues raised on GitHub every day. Please note an issue is not a fatal bug, but often just an enhancement or a glitch. These issues which often were quite important, and the problems with the "fork 3" error we had in the past weeks forced us to neglect the pre-launch roadmap a little bit.
I assure you that we didn't forget it. We will finish it up as soon as possible after launch. We did a lot more than stated on the pre-launch roadmap. As the changelogs are showing.
For example a feature which was not mentioned in the pre-launch roadmap is the complete back end switch to a new database engine. This allows us to scale past our previous limitations. If you want you can ask a few questions about the switch later. 🙂
This concludes the current status. Let me get to the current work and preparations for launch.
As you know, we will finally launch on May 24th! We are EXTREMELY happy about it. We are excited to see Lisk running in the wild, evolving into the next big thing in the technology world.
This date is final, we are putting all our efforts into that date. However, please note that this is still software development. While the day is 100% secure, we can't announce a specific time yet. We may be able to do it closer to launch (e.g. 23rd), but I can't give you one at this moment.We are aware that a launch time is necessary. We will try our best to give you one. We just can't announce it today. We try our best to announce it on 23rd.
Now let's talk about what we need to do until launch:1. We need to compile a list with all public keys, Lisk addresses and the LSK amount they receive. This will be the foundation of the genesis block.
2. Then we need to generate the genesis block in which every ICO exchange is listed in with the public key and the LSK amount they receive. This genesis block will be released shortly before launch, probably on 23rd. So that everyone can check if they are included correctly.
Please note that all non-validated accounts will be summarised in one single account. This way we can be 100% sure that everyone had his passphrase at least at one point of time (because he validated it). It's necessary so we can't be at fault at this point and people will lawyer up against us.
3. Our development team also needs to finalise the work on the final client Lisk v0.2.4. There are no major changes (in terms of core code) anymore, this way we can stay 100% sure that everything will work at launch.
4. Once we have the final v0.2.4/v0.3.0 client, Oliver will have to provide all the different binaries and docker version for it. We will have to add them to our download page on Lisk.io, do a cross-reading of all resources we have. (FAQ, Website, BTT Thread etc.) This way we will have a uniform web presence with up-to-date information.
5. We will also release several blog posts up to launch. The most important one for you being the guide on how to use the Lisk passphrase to access your LSK.
Many people asked for such a guide and we planned it all along. So stay tuned, it should appear at the latest by Monday on our blog.
Additionally, there is a lot more to do. A lot of small things which adds up to a huge work amount. We don't need to go into detail here. Above's are probably the main points of interest for you. 🙂
MarketingThe last point of the current work agenda point is *Marketing*. We are moving mountains to let everyone be aware of Lisk at launch.
With over 1600 users in the chat alone, and about the same unique visitors on our website today. I think we are succeeding. 🙂
We bought ads on CoinTelegraph and today I will buy some on CoinMarketCap as well. A dear Lisk supporter also bought advertisements on Reddit, I don't know who it is. However I want to thank him for that. 👍
I tried Facebook ads a lot with many different angles in the past. It doesn't work. It's money wasting. 🙂 Facebook ads are only good for bigger marketing budgets (what we have in the future) to create awareness in the subconsciousness.
PR work
We are working together with Transform.PR to get major media coverage. We have worked on a simple, but effective strategy for launch and post-launch.
1. Mainstream outlets for credibility. (I had several interviews with *big*, industry standard news outlets.)
2. Cryptocurrency outlets for publicity and momentum. (Also here I had several interviews with news outlets.) This industry is moving faster. So a lot will come next week here. We have very known friends, who will help us in that regard. 😉
3. Tech/Dev/IoT outlets will be taken care off after launch. They will bring blockchain apps and usability to Lisk.
Additionally to Transform.PR we also hired BitcoinPRBuzz to get us a lot of smaller coverages on several Bitcoin and Blockchain related news sites. E.g. criptonoticias, Bitcoinist, and so on. We paid them for 7 press releases, which will be constantly released every few days. So that there is always buzz around Lisk for the first 2-3 weeks after launch.
This is just an effort to keep Lisk in the media. 🙂 Transform.PR will bring us the big news, while BitcoinPRBuzz will bring us constant smaller news.
Ok guys, now to the last point of my agenda. To summarise it again:
- A few sentences about our Long Term Roadmap
- Apps in Development
- Development Plan
- Core Apps
A few sentences about our long term roadmapI talked a lot with Oliver about our vision and where we want to go. We have a pretty clear vision in our head, which is not yet formulated on paper. We will release a vision paper a few weeks after launch.
One big feature in our head is that the network will also provide the necessary infrastructure for the blockchain applications. That means we probably will have some kind of a "Delegate Marketplace" in which every delegate can insert his node information and his price. And then the app developers can rent the delegate nodes on the market, to secure their sidechain and applicaiton. This way we can have thousands of delegates on the network, which will have a task. Due to the renting, they can earn money and a constant need of LSK is needed.
More about that and other important features in the vision paper in a few weeks. 🙂
Apps in developmentI know of a few community members who are developing blockchain applications right now. I read and heard about online shops, decentralized trust platforms, games, gambling apps, and more. I don't want to announce anything for these users. It will probably also take some time after launch. I just want to let you know that there is app development going on. It will just take a few weeks or maybe even months to get to a point, at which our network has a handful of great applications with real use-cases.
The development of blockchain apps isn't hard, but it's something entirely new. That's why it takes some time to mature.
Development PlanWe will release the Lisk core client as a beta version at launch, and the Lisk app platform as an alpha version. The Lisk core client can be seen as stable at this point of time, however we didn't have much time to fix some issues occurring on the sidechains. These will be fixed and taken care off. But the Lisk app platform will remain a prototyping platform for apps until we get into a beta version for the Lisk app platform.
It won't be dramatically long. So don't worry. 🙂 We just want to make some necessary changes to the sidechains, which will allow us to be more flexible in the future.
One thing is to make it more modular, so that the consensus algorithm can be swapped out. E.g. if someone wants normal PoS or PoW, he can get it. Or if he wants to have a 1min block time, he should only change 1 parameter. For this we need to change some things. 🙂
You can expect that during the first 3 months after release we will put the biggest focus on security, scalability, and optimisation of the whole Lisk ecosystem.
Obviously we will also finish up the pre-launch items and work on other things, but as written above we want to get the perfect foundation to build on in the coming years.
After that we will start to work on new features, core apps, and so on. More details later.
Core ~D~AppsThey are still a thing, yes. The blog post need to be changed to our latest terminology changes though. 😛
Once we feel the sidechains are stable enough to build very reliable applications with, we will work on the core apps.
Quick explanation: Core apps are features built on top of Lisk with our App SDK. They can be created pretty fast, without wasting costly space on our main blockchain.
Core Apps in our focus at this moment are: Messaging, identity (username, name, email, and more), a karma system, and an app rating/commenting system.
Okay guys, you did it. I'm finished!
