r/Lisk • u/IntrepidRun3408 • 4d ago
Introducing the New Lisk
A message from Max Kordek, founder of Lisk
Over the last ten years, Lisk has reinvented itself more than once. New features, new technology, new ways of describing what we do. Today is something different. The journey we've been on comes to an end, and a bigger one begins.
Since 2016, we've worked side by side with founders whose companies operate the way the internet does: across borders and entities from day one. Over the years, the same gap kept surfacing in our conversations: the financial layer underneath their businesses had not kept pace with how those businesses actually ran. That looked like a bank account opened, then closed. A transfer to a partner blocked with no explanation. A compliance team treating a perfectly legitimate company as an exception rather than a customer. Fiat balances over here, stablecoin balances over there, and no single place where the truth lives.
None of this came as a surprise to us. Lisk's own finance team was running into the same walls. Simple tasks were never quite simple. We were closing books across entities, chasing approvers across time zones, and reconstructing context after the fact, week after week. Like any serious operator, we became more efficient at navigating these challenges; we built better processes, got faster, sharpened internal workflows, and ultimately created our own workarounds.
For a time, that was enough. But workarounds, no matter how good, are still workarounds, and the tools to run a company like ours properly did not exist anywhere we looked. It wasn’t just us, either: the founders we'd spent a decade working beside were patching the same gaps. So we made a decision. We took ten years of being close to this problem, on the outside and on the inside, and we built the finance platform that we and the companies around us actually need.
That's what Lisk becomes today: the modern money operations platform for finance teams. One workspace where accounts, payments, and approvals live together, across entities, jurisdictions, and fiat and stablecoin rails. Early access is open today to qualified businesses.
This new direction also means ending others. The Lisk Chain and the Lisk DAO are winding down on a defined timeline. Together with the Celo team, we've opened a migration path for the dapps and developers building on the Chain. The full plan, including timelines and what to do next, is set out below.
Ten years brought us to today. The new Lisk starts now, and what lies ahead has never been more exciting.
What Lisk is today, and why now
The shift that brought the new Lisk here is now visible at scale. In 2025, B2B stablecoin payments reached $226 billion, more than eight times what they were the year before. They now make up roughly 60% of all real-world stablecoin payment volume. The same companies driving that growth, meanwhile, are routinely shut out of the basic banking they need to operate. More than 8 in 10 crypto companies in Europe have been unable to open a merchant bank account without facing repeated closures. The volumes have caught up to the conversations. The infrastructure has not.
Other platforms have built useful tools for parts of this picture. Banking apps for consumers and small businesses. Treasury platforms for crypto-native operators managing onchain balances. Each does its job, but none of them was built for the company running five entities across four jurisdictions, paying a team spread across ten countries, holding fiat and stablecoins side by side, with a CFO who needs to close the books cleanly by Friday.
That company is the one Lisk is built for. Not a single account, a single rail, or a single function, but everything a modern finance team needs in one place, with the controls that make it all work together. Three things make Lisk different from the platforms next to it:
- Unified operations. Accounts, payments, and approvals live in one workspace, across every entity you run. Month-end stops being a hunt across five logins and a spreadsheet, and becomes a rollup.
- Built-in control. Roles, permissions, and approval policies, with every action carrying a name and a timestamp. Sign-offs happen where the money moves, not buried in a chat thread.
- Multi-rail by design. Fiat and stablecoins sit in the same workspace, moving through regulated financial services providers, including Bridge, a Stripe company. Same queue, same approvals, no difference.
One workspace, built around how finance teams actually work. That is Lisk, and Early Access is open today.
What's in Early Access today
Early Access opens today for teams operating at the intersection of fiat and stablecoins, across currencies, regions, and entities. If that sounds like your company, this is for you.
Starting today, Lisk gives you one place for your money across bank and stablecoin rails. A bank transfer and a stablecoin deposit land in the same account, as one balance. You can receive bank transfers through virtual accounts with real account details, take in stablecoins directly, and pay out to any external bank account. Every payment follows the approval policy you set, and every action is tied to a name. It’s the product we wish we had years ago.
More is in the pipeline. Capabilities across corporate cards, non-custodial treasury management tools and payroll integrations are part of where the product is heading from here.
If this sounds like it would take real work off your team's plate and give you hours back, we want to hear from you.
You can request early access on our website.
What's changing for the Lisk Chain
The Lisk Chain will shut down on October 31, 2026.
The dapps, developers, and teams who built on the Lisk Chain shipped real products to real users. None of that is lost in this transition. Over the last several weeks, we have been working closely with the Celo team to open a migration path for projects on the Lisk Chain to the Celo network.
Migration is open to every project. The Celo team is committed to supporting teams that choose to make the move and has prepared resources to help projects get set up in their ecosystem. If you're interested in migrating, fill out the short interest form and the Celo team will be in touch to share more tailored resources and work through timing, redeployment, and what makes sense for your users.
Until October 31, the Chain stays operational and the underlying infrastructure stays supported. If you want to get a head start, you can check out the migration guide and FAQ below.
What's changing for the Lisk DAO
For years, the community has had a direct say in how the DAO treasury was allocated, who received grants, and what came next for the project. Holders showed up for the votes that mattered, raised the concerns that needed raising, and shaped real outcomes in the years they had a seat at the table. That work counts, and it has shaped what Lisk is becoming. As the company narrows fully to our new product, we propose the DAO winds down with it.
Some of the changes we propose:
- One hundred million LSK will be burned from the DAO treasury, taking the total supply from 400 million down to 300 million.
- Staking will become flexible for everyone. Once this proposal passes and the staking contract is updated, anyone holding LSK will be able to unstake at any time with no penalty. A 3-day waiting period still applies after unstaking.
- The DAO infrastructure, including the governance contracts and the Lisk Governance Forum, will be wound down on the timeline set in the proposal.
The full rationale and action plan are now live on the Lisk Governance Forum. If you have been part of this, the vote is yours.
What this means for the LSK token
LSK has been a constant through every version of Lisk. As the Lisk Chain winds down, LSK takes on a new role: the loyalty token of the new Lisk. Businesses will earn rewards for running their money operations on Lisk and for bringing others onto the platform, and over time they will be able to receive those rewards in LSK and pay their fees with it. As the product grows, so does LSK's role.
For holders, what to do depends on where your LSK sits. If it's on Ethereum or an exchange, there is nothing you need to do: it's the same token, the same contract, trading as it always has. If you hold LSK on the Lisk Chain, or you are staking, you will need to move it to Ethereum before the Chain closes on October 31, 2026, and bridging takes at least 7 days. For stakers, penalty-free unstaking opens after the DAO vote passes, and we will confirm on our official channels once it is live. From there, unstaking has a 3-day waiting period before you can bridge, so we recommend starting immediately.
Going forward, Base becomes LSK's primary network alongside Ethereum.
Everything, from LSK's new role to the steps for unstaking and bridging, is covered in the LSK Token FAQ.
To everyone who got us here
To the builders who chose the Lisk Chain and shipped real work on it. To the holders who have stayed with LSK through every turn. To the DAO members who shaped this project through every vote that mattered. Thank you for the trust on this journey.
A lot has changed in the last ten years to bring Lisk to this point. The belief underneath it has not: companies that span borders, entities, and currencies deserve a financial layer built for the way they operate. The decade behind us closes. Everything we learned in it goes into what comes next.
