Lisk shut down its original blockchain, the Lisk Chain, on November 2, 2026, after closing the Lisk Portal and Lisk Bridge before switching off the remaining infrastructure. Lisk said the closure ended access through services supporting interaction with the legacy network. LSK will continue on Ethereum under its existing ERC-20 contract, which Lisk said remains unchanged by the shutdown. Assets left on the retired chain are expected to be addressed through a manual claims process planned for January 2027.
Portal and bridge closure ends access to the Lisk Chain
The November 2 closure was sequenced around the services users would have needed to access or move assets on the Lisk Chain. The Portal and Bridge closed first, according to Lisk, followed by the planned switch-off of the remaining infrastructure.
That ordering matters for holders who did not migrate before the shutdown. With the bridge no longer available, the ordinary route for moving assets between the legacy network and Ethereum is no longer operating. The outstanding question is therefore not whether the original chain remains available, but how assets still recorded there can be recovered.
Lisk has not presented the shutdown as a change to its Ethereum token contract. Instead, it separates the retirement of its original chain from the continued use of LSK on Ethereum.
LSK continues exclusively as an Ethereum ERC-20 token
LSK remains Lisk’s loyalty token on Ethereum, with 0% inflation, and the Ethereum ERC-20 contract is unchanged by the chain shutdown, Lisk said. In practical terms, the project’s token continues, but its legacy native-chain environment does not.
Exchange Bitvavo independently told customers ahead of the closure that LSK would exist exclusively on Ethereum’s ERC-20 network after the transition. Its October 28 notice advised users holding LSK on the Lisk Chain to migrate before an October 31, 2026 deadline.
The deadline preceded the November 2 network shutdown, leaving a narrow operational distinction between the two dates: the exchange’s migration instruction applied before the chain was closed, while the closure ended the underlying network and its associated access tools. Bitvavo’s notice also provides a third-party confirmation of the destination network for LSK following the transition.
The key distinction for token holders is where the LSK remained after the transition: holdings on Ethereum continue under the unchanged ERC-20 contract, while assets left on the retired Lisk Chain may depend on a separate recovery route that has yet to be detailed.
Lisk plans to burn 5.2 million unissued staking-reward tokens
The chain closure also has a supply-related consequence. Lisk said it plans to burn about 5.2 million LSK that remain in its staking-rewards contract once the chain has been fully shut down.
The proposed burn concerns tokens still held in that rewards contract, not LSK that users have staked. Lisk explicitly excluded user-staked tokens from the planned action, drawing a line between undistributed rewards held by the protocol arrangement and tokens belonging to participants.
The stated amount describes what is planned after the chain fully shuts down, not a confirmation that the tokens have already been removed from supply; no additional timing was specified.
Assets left on the retired chain face a January claims process
The remaining operational issue is the treatment of assets that were not moved before access to the Lisk Chain ended. CryptoSlate reported that Lisk plans to introduce a manual claims process in January 2027 for assets left on the retired chain.
The process is not yet defined publicly. Eligibility rules and the recovery mechanics had not been published, leaving holders without confirmed instructions on which assets can be claimed, what evidence may be required or how transfers would be processed.
That gap makes the January process the next material milestone for users who missed the migration window. Until Lisk publishes the criteria and procedure, the continued availability of LSK on Ethereum does not by itself resolve the status of assets that remain on the closed network.
