Considering that the likelihood of a fork may arise to the Lisk project in the future, a member within its community has raised an open question to what would be the response to the situation - if it happens.
Referencing Lisk’s CEO, Max Kordek, who had earlier said that something like the DAO might be possible on the platform in a few years, a question was raised on whether there is a plan on how to handle a coding issue similar to the DAO/ETH error that led to the “DAO Hack”.
How will Lisk DAO handle security issues?
According to the Lisk’s August technical meeting - the second community meeting focusing on the technical aspects of Lisk - where developers provided detailed answers to questions compiled before the meeting from the community of Lisk users, Kordek reiterated that they don’t think a Lisk DAO as a sidechain will become a reality within the next few years.
Kordek stated in the posted response to the community:
“This means we have a lot of time to improve the general concept of a DAO, and its related security issues. After the DAO fiasco, there has been a lot of research conducted regarding smart contract security, and we intend to utilize it for the benefit of a potential Lisk DAO in the future.”
Ethereum vs. Lisk
He added that there is a major difference between Ethereum and Lisk which is that sidechains operate autonomously from the parent mainchain rather than part of a global monolithic machine.
The mainchain does not benefit directly from sidechains. He explained that there is rather a benefit for the network as a whole as every new sidechain will bring in new users, a bigger value, and therefore a growing ecosystem pointing to the potential that Lisk can grow much bigger than any other blockchain-based platform.
On when the sidechain integration will be achieved, the team says they aim to stabilize sidechain development and the surrounding toolset by early 2017.
Oliver Beddows says:
“I hope between then and now we will make gradual progress, so that the documentation, examples, and tools are significantly better than they are now. First and foremost, sidechain security needs to be improved before we can take apps into production safely.”
So, would Lisk consider a hard fork?
According to Kordek, he and his team take a very pessimistic view on hard forks and will do everything not to come into a situation where a hard fork is necessary.
He states:
“One thing is for sure; it will always be a decision on a case-by-case basis. The final decision will obviously be made by the delegates and not by the Lisk team, we can only be the neutral instance releasing a compatible client. In the case of Lisk sidechains (and lost funds on the mainchain due to it) we won’t consider a mainchain hard fork at all, as sidechains are meant to be independent. The decision for sidechain hard forks comes down to the sidechain development team and its delegates.”