On October 31, Swiss Web3 infrastructure company Lisk will shut down its blockchain network and move its remaining products and developers to rival network Celo, TechCabal reported.
The shutdown concludes a decade-long blockchain project that began in 2016 and later shifted to Ethereum, according to TechCabal. The company announced the wind-down in August and has been carrying out a strategic reset since late 2025, the report said.
TechCabal said the reset started when co-founder and chief executive officer Max Kordek returned to the business in December 2025, with former chief technology officer Oliver Beddows taking the role of chief strategy officer. After Kordek stepped down in 2024, the organisation formerly known as the Lisk Foundation, now the Onchain Foundation, began consolidating activities.
The consolidation included discontinuing Onchain, the foundation’s research arm, and Pass App, its wallet product, TechCabal reported. By May 2026 the restructuring had made several roles redundant, affecting the Lisk blockchain’s regional leads and business development teams as the company pulled back from blockchain expansion.
TechCabal said Lisk is refocusing on building a financial operations platform for businesses, aimed at accounts, payments and approvals across fiat and stablecoin rails. The move, the report added, closes Lisk’s chapter as a standalone blockchain and reduces one of the ecosystem companies that backed early-stage Web3 founders in Africa.
A separate industry report cited in the TechCabal piece found Africa’s blockchain companies raised US$90.1 million across 28 deals in 2025, a 26.6 percent decline from the previous year, according to venture capital firm Crypto Valley VC. TechCabal said deal volume fell slightly, from 30 to 28 deals, suggesting a more selective funding market.
TechCabal described Lisk’s Africa strategy as commercially driven. The report said Lisk pushed into the region from 2024, co-hosting roadshows in Cape Town, Nairobi and Lagos, creating local Telegram communities in Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya, and partnering with training institutes including Web3Bridge, AyaHQ and CV Labs, plus the accelerator run by Crypto Valley VC.
According to Lisk’s year recap cited by TechCabal, the blockchain had about 95,474 accounts and processed over 22 million transactions by the end of 2024. The report said founders building on Lisk received grants often worth about US$4,000 paid in LSK, the network’s native token, and some converted those tokens into dollar-backed stablecoins such as USDT to fund operations.
TechCabal also placed Lisk’s exit within broader market trends. It cited Chainalysis research showing stablecoins accounted for about 43 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa’s crypto transaction volume in 2024, and that Nigeria made up roughly 40 percent of the region’s stablecoin inflows. The International Monetary Fund estimate, quoted in the piece, put Nigeria’s share of stablecoin inflows to Sub-Saharan Africa since 2019 at more than 60 percent.
Industry observers and founders who worked with Lisk told TechCabal that, beyond cash grants, the network provided introductions to investors, partners and other founders, helping some teams travel and build commercial relationships. The report said some of those benefits will be lost as Lisk exits the blockchain market.
Featured image: S1951023 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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