Lisk

Blockchain project Lisk announced on August 25 that it will shut down its proprietary blockchain, the Lisk Chain, on October 31 and fully pivot to a treasury management platform for corporate finance. The announcement was made public as a message signed by founder and CEO Max Kordek. The new platform offers a service that consolidates account management, remittances, and approvals into a single screen, transcending differences in countries and payment methods, with early access for select companies beginning the same day. The move is driven by the rapid growth of B2B stablecoin payments and the banking challenges faced by crypto companies, with over 80% of European crypto industry firms having experienced rejection or closure of corporate accounts. The company plans to collaborate with financial operators such as Bridge, a subsidiary of Stripe, to address these issues. In connection with the chain closure, Lisk will partner with the layer-1 blockchain Celo to establish a migration environment for decentralized applications and developers on Lisk. Additionally, a proposal has been made to dissolve the operational community organization Lisk DAO, which would destroy the 100 million LSK tokens held by the organization, reducing the total supply from 400 million to 300 million tokens to stabilize token value. Furthermore, the waiting time for unstaking will be uniformly shortened to three days. The LSK token will transition to a new role as a "loyalty token," which can be earned as rewards based on trading activity and customer referrals on the new platform. LSK tokens held or staked on the old Lisk Chain must be migrated to Ethereum before the chain closure, a process that takes at least seven days. Going forward, Ethereum and Base will serve as the primary networks for LSK. Among domestic crypto exchanges, four companies—bitFlyer, Coincheck, OKJ, and Binance Japan—currently handle LSK.