Lisk, a smart contracts blockchain platform with a built-in cryptocurrency concluded its month-long initial offering with a bang on Monday morning with over $7 million raised in funds from individual and institutional investors. That makes Lisk the second most successful crowdfunding campaign ever for a cryptocurrency, and the 15th most successful campaign for any crowdfunding project, period.
Smart contracts are heralded to be the killer app of decentralized computing, with Ethereum being the first pre-sale in the arena last year, and now Lisk bringing smart contract development to the masses, appealing to programmers its lauded Node.js backend and easy to write and deploy JavaScript app development. The developers of Lisk quickly won over partners, such as Microsoft, Chain of Things, and ShapeShift, which put the platform on a fast track to raising the funds and trading on cryptocurrency exchanges, which, according to the founders, is scheduled for April 2016.
Lisk was founded by Max Kordek and Oliver Beddows, both of whom were previously involved with Bitcoin and a cryptocurrency named Crypti. Now that the funds have been raised, the team will be focused on hiring additional developers and forging new partner relationships, Kordek said.