According to the latest proposal posted on August 25, 2025, Lisk will discontinue its DAO and burn 100 million LSK tokens while transferring approximately 47 million LSK to Lisk Ltd, the company behind the project. The wind-down proposal, published on the Lisk Governance Forum at 11:54 UTC, would burn 100 million LSK from the DAO treasury, reducing total supply from 400 million to 300 million tokens - a 25% reduction. The token's chart explains the urgency, with LSK peaking at $34.92 in January 2018 and trading near $0.09 as of this writing, down more than 99% from that high. The proposal states that future costs will be funded by the Onchain Foundation rather than by selling treasury LSK, which it presents as removing a recurring source of sell pressure.
Back in 2016, Lisk was crypto's second-biggest crowd-funded project, raising more than 14,000 BTC worth about $5.7 million at the time - only Ethereum's 2014 sale had raised more. The token reached a market cap of nearly $4 billion during its peak. In December 2023, the team abandoned its original Layer-1 chain and rebuilt Lisk as an Ethereum Layer-2, which is now being closed after barely two years of operation. The new Lisk enters a fintech market where rivals hold billion-dollar war chests, with Ramp raising $750 million in June at a $44 billion valuation and Stripe paying $1.1 billion for Bridge, the very provider Lisk routes money through.
The token's all-time low of $0.07 was set on August 3, three weeks before this announcement. Binance flagged LSK for delisting risk in July by adding it to the exchange's Monitoring Tag. Holders keeping LSK on Ethereum or exchanges do not need to act, as the contract and ticker stay the same. However, anyone holding or staking tokens on the Lisk Chain must bridge to Ethereum before October 31, with bridging taking at least seven days and unstaking adding a three-day wait once the vote passes. LSK traded near $0.08 as of this writing, down 5% on the shutdown news, with a market cap of about $20.3 million - roughly 0.05% of Ramp's private valuation.
The new Lisk merges fiat and stablecoin money operations, putting accounts, payments, and approval rules in one workspace across entities and currencies. A bank transfer and a stablecoin deposit land as one balance, with businesses receiving virtual accounts with real bank details and paying out to external bank accounts. The platform is free on its Professional plan through 2026, a sign Lisk is buying adoption before charging for it. Money moves through regulated providers, including Bridge, a Stripe company. LSK becomes the platform's loyalty token, with businesses earning rewards for using Lisk and for referrals, rolling out in phases, though paying fees in LSK comes later with no date attached. The DAO treasury tells another story, with roughly 47 million LSK moving to Lisk Ltd after the 100 million LSK burn, as per cessation documents.
The market behind the pivot is real, with B2B stablecoin payments hitting $226 billion in 2025, up 733% in a year, according to a McKinsey and Artemis Analytics study. Corporate treasuries have spent the past year replacing wires with stablecoins for cross-border settlement. However, Lisk faces significant competition, with incumbents building for fiat first or crypto first, never both. The closest precedent is not encouraging, as EOS raised about $4 billion in crypto's biggest token sale and rebranded to Vaulta in March 2025 to chase Web3 banking, with its token down 85% over the past year. The new Lisk has left itself no chain to fall back on, with the closest precedent showing that winning CFOs may prove harder than winning developers ever was.
