Stratis - Revolutionizing Blockchain Technology

September 10, 2017

Stratis is a very powerful blockchain-as-a-service platform that is focused around the requirements of financial services and other businesses that aim to utilize blockchain technology. Blockchain technology is becoming a revolutionary movement in numerous sectors including medical, financial, and technological. With this said, Stratis is focusing on becoming the most widely adopted BaaS platform.

Why Stratis?

Now you may be wondering why Stratis? Well, the answer put simply is that Stratis allows corporations and businesses to develop their own custom blockchain applications. This is highly beneficial for businesses because it allows for a simple development process of applications that are centered towards using blockchain technology. The aspect that makes it so revolutionary is that these blockchain applications can be developed in C# and make use (light or heavy – depends on the goals of the developers) of the Microsoft .NET framework.

As part of Stratis’ roadmap, sidechains are to be implemented in Q4 2017. Businesses can use the Stratis sidechains to develop and launch their own blockchain-based applications. This is essential as it allows businesses to build their own blockchain applications without the worries of having to build and maintain their own blockchain infrastructure. Along with this, any transactions that occur on a Stratis sidechain avoid the worries of being bloated. This is crucial because it has been seen before with Ethereum-based ICO’s where the main chain was bloated with transactions causing severe transaction waiting periods. If ICO’s are to be launched on a platform, the use of sidechains would greatly alleviate this issue – which Stratis is envisioning as part of their goal.

Real world use cases:

Seafood Industry:

Stratis teamed up with Earth Twine on August 16, 2017. This partnership commenced the first dedicated blockchain for origin data and tracking for the international seafood industry. The Earth Twine group will work with Stratis technology to provide a way of tracking mandatory data for IUU fishing compliance. Stratis will create a dedicated blockchain and token to amalgamate international seafood tracking onto the blockchain. The global fish and seafood industry generates large revenues annually amounting to over $100B+. The partnership between Earth Twine and Stratis will ultimately help confirm and validate the information as being true and legitimate. Commencing in January 2018, the data regarding imports and tracking of information will be collected electronically. Stratis will make the process of tracking data in this industry very easy and will be highly beneficial for the Earth Twine group as well as further seafood industry organizations down the road.

Medical Research:

The Stratis blockchain will be highly beneficial in the medical sector as it will resolve issues regarding publication and research by offering an immutable store of records. Since this information cannot be maliciously altered, researchers and publishers working on medical research can verify the integrity and legitimacy of a record on the Stratis blockchain.

Financial Technology:

Stratis has a lot of ability to shine in this space because the team looks to solve issues such as eliminating the need to put trust into 3rd party escrows, identity management, and KYC (know your customer) compliances by utilizing the powerful blockchain technology that Stratis provides.

Stratis vs. Ethereum

I have seen a lot of reoccurring questions regarding the similarities and differences between the Stratis project and the Ethereum project. Although there are some similarities that both platforms can relate to, there are also several key differences that I will note in Table 1:

Table 1: Differences and Similarities between Ethereum and Stratis.

As Table 1 depicts, Ethereum and Stratis both support smart contracts, but the major difference is the language which these contracts are developed. C# is a common language amongst the software development community, whereas Solidity is not. This ultimately means that the creation of smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain comes at the cost of having to learn the Solidity programming language – which can be a big burden to developers of businesses, as C# is more recognized and more widely adopted.

Stratis Roadmap:

Breeze Wallet

The Breeze Wallet is an upcoming software wallet that is aiming to integrate the TumbleBit technology to provide seamlessly private transactions across the network without the need for a centralized mixing service or another privacy-based cryptocurrency. Privacy is becoming more of a demand in this day and age, especially on the blockchain. A big obstacle of mainstream adoption of blockchain technology is the privacy and integrity of financial data on the chain. When the privacy protocol is implemented successfully into the Stratis platform, businesses in the financial industry can be assured that records and data remain private.

The TumbleBit technology provides the following guarantees:

1. Transactions are private and unlinkable.
2. TumbleBit is fully compatible with the Bitcoin protocol.
3. It is impossible for anyone to steal your payments.

Another benefit of the Breeze Wallet is the seamlessly efficient and easy exchange from Stratis to Bitcoin, and vice-versa. The implementation of TumbleBit in the Breeze Wallet will allow for a trustless and cryptographically secure exchange between Bitcoin and Stratis. The development of the Breeze Wallet which supports enhanced privacy for Bitcoin transactions is expected to bring an influx of users of Bitcoin to the wallet. Doing so, this will allow Stratis to be more widely exposed to a whole new geographical set of users.

The Breeze Wallet Alpha is coming soon after efficient testing has been completed, which will segue into a full out version of the Breeze Wallet on the Stratis mainnet.

Sidechains

As mentioned previously, Stratis will be the go-to hub for creating blockchain applications on Sidechains provided by the infrastructure. Developers can easily build their applications in C# and not have to worry about learning a less-known programming language. Along with the sidechain, there is a guarantee that the main network is not congested with activity generated by a business or corporation. As we progress over time, Stratis will be able to shine by providing sidechains to businesses that want to create their own applications, but not have to worry about developing and maintaining their own network and infrastructure.

Stratis Identity

The goals and visions of Stratis also include identity management which is becoming more of a requirement as regulation of cryptocurrencies and mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies progresses. Software developers who are looking to build on Stratis sidechains will be able to build applications focusing on identity management. KYC compliance issues will also be resolved through identity management.

Conclusion

Overall, Stratis is still a highly-undervalued project that has huge potential to shine. The team is continuously working hard to deliver development milestones. Just by looking at the ICO price (~$0.02) up until the ATH (all-time-high) of $11.67 is an astronomical gain, considering the young age of Stratis. With the development of the project still continuing, and growing, we are yet to see Stratis’ true potential in becoming a revolutionary one-stop shop of a blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) platform.

I hope this article has helped you understand and learn more about the technicalities and goals of the Stratis team.

This is in no way any investing advice, merely an introduction of Stratis and the upcoming milestones of the project.