Innovation Finds A Home At The Beach!
This past weekend I had the pleasure of visiting Team Nimiq during one of their famous hackathons in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica. For those in the Lisk and Blockchain community that have not heard about the Nimiq project before - the team is striving to be the best performing and easiest-to-use decentralized payment protocol & ecosystem. Nimiq was also the headline sponsor of this years Tico Blockchain Conference where I gave a presentation on how I see the future of blockchain salability.
These hackathons happen roughly 3 to 5 times per year, when the Nimiq team travels to Costa Rica from all over the world to participate in several weeks of intense coding and problem solving. The idea is to have these events in the remote and peaceful pueblo of Santa Teresa, where work can go uninterrupted and one can enjoy the natural beauty of Costa Rica while coding a better tomorrow.
These hackatons are made possible by a former coworking space that Nimiq have transformed into their own personal blockchain oasis. This space has to be one of the coolest places that I have ever had the pleasure of coding at. From hearing the tranquil sounds of the ocean to breathing in the fresh ocean air, this in of itself is an experience. Add being surrounded by like minded individuals with similar interest and you have an ideal location to get some serious work done.
There were also discussions about having a Lisk event here in the future and inviting some of the top community members from around the world to kick start some side chain projects.
The Lisk And Nimiq Connection
Lisk and Nimiq share some pretty fundamental similarities that are anything but superficial. Both Projects share roots with several of the team members coming from Germany. On top of that they also both made the strategic decision to use JavaScript early on as their core platform language. Both citing the reason being to bring on adoption at a very rapid pace by utilizing the already existing large community of JavaScript developers. This brings me to one of the most substantial connections between these two great projects. The connection being both Lisk and Nimiq have entered partnerships with WEG BANK AG.
On their official Twitter account Lisk commented on their new partnership:
Lisk is the first blockchain project integrated as a corporate account with WEG Bank, run by Mattias Hauff. This sets the path for the rollout of new financial services for the Foundation, such as new ways to buy LSK as well as seamless LSK-fiat payments in the near future.
A month earlier Nimiq released a blog post announcing they had also entered into a partnership:
Team Nimiq is thrilled to announce that we are developing a new and potentially disruptive Crypto-to-Fiat bridge in collaboration with the German WEG Bank AG
Shortly after publicizing their partnership, Nimiq announced that they had also acquired stake in WEG.
Team Nimiq is excited to announce that the project has recently acquired a 9.9% stake in German WEG Bank AG.
These partnerships both have the aim of connecting their projects to the legacy banking and fiat system to the push the entry barrier lower for their respective end users. The similarities between these two projects are more then just skin deep and demonstrate a understanding of where this industry is going.
Connecting The Blocks
My visit produced more then just a sunburn. Very deep discussions were had with the Nimiq team about how we can bring the Lisk and Nimiq Eco-systems together in a way that will benefit both network participates. Now that the Alpha SDK is around the corner, Lisk Central America plans on exploring these discussions and being one of the first group of developers to utilize the SDK and provide HQ with some feedback. We will keep you updated on this possible integration with what it might look like and how it could be implemented.
Exciting times are ahead for the Lisk Eco-system and we plan on continuing to champion adoption here in Central America!
