What Is Stratis? – Beginner’s Guide
The Stratis platform and Stratis Coin (STRAT) is a flexible yet powerful Blockchain development platform. It is providing a Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) tool (called nSTRATIS) that is designed specifically for real world corporations and financial services. The platform is intended to simplify the creation, testing and deployment of companies’ own blockchains using C# and the Microsoft .Net frameworks and by offering companies the use of sidechains on the main Stratis Blockchain.
In addition to this, Stratis is also implementing an ICO Platform. This ICO Platform is a secure and customisable platform that allows anyone to host their own ICO’s on the Stratis Blockchain Network. This is the first of its kind to offer such a simple and complete ICO package and can make ICO’s that are hosted by Startis a go-to for the industry.
The Basics of Stratis
Technically speaking the Stratis Platform is a clone of Bitcoin’s core code, instead written in C#, with additional features build on top. This allows for the Stratis Platform to offer customisable sidechains which helps the platform to scale as a whole and keeps separate chains in their own discrete parts of the network. This will help to relieve a lot of congestion from the main Stratis chain and will allow the side chains to work independently so the companies who own the sidechains still have a lot of control. Having a platform to build upon is incredibly useful as it reduces the costs and security concerns that would generally arise from a completely in-house operation.
The Stratis Platform provides a lot of features to help bring the development of Blockchains to more people. Such features include:
Stratis Academy – The Stratis Academy is a part of the Stratis website that is aimed to help developers build and develop their blockchains using the C# and .Net frameworks. Included are technical specifications, product descriptions and informational articles to help developers understand the potential of Stratis Coin. There are also a heap of resources that include documentation code, samples and reference implementations for Blockchain development. There is also the ability for developers to join something called Stratis Slack. This is a community of Stratis developers and the Stratis business team that are there to help and discuss technical applications and development tools. In addition to this, Stratis are planning to add a Stratis Academy Certification in Q2 of 2018. This is an IP technology and education program that is aimed to help developers prepare for the potential future high demand of blockchain projects by providing training material, mentoring and testing infrastructure.
ICO Platform – When a company has successfully used the Blockchain development part of Stratis they are then able to use the ICO Platform to launch their product and coin. Whilst the ICO Platform isn’t out of the development stage at the moment, there is a test ICO that you can use to see how simple it will be to launch an ICO on the Stratis network.
Stratis Coin (STRAT) – The Stratis Token is a proof of stake cryptocurrency that has a low inflation rate and was initially used to help fund Stratis. As it is now a proof of stake crypto it means that holders of the coin are able to stake their investment to earn rewards. More on this in a bit.
These features significantly simplify the development and testing process for creating Blockchain applications and can help to accelerate the development lifecycle for blockchain projects.
What is Stratis Staking?
When talking about cryptocurrencies “staking” is a term used to describe a process that is similar to earning interest or dividends on your holdings. To do this you need to hold your STRAT coins in a special staking wallet that will give you returns on your holdings. This whole process is able to happen because Stratis uses a proof of stake algorithm to validate the network. This means users with more Stratis tokens have more power in how the network operates and in turn are rewarded with additional STRAT.
For more detailed information on what Proof of Stake is, check out our dedicated post on.
Roadmap
Here is a detailed plan of Stratis Coin’s past achievements and future plans:
Team
Stratis is situated in the UK but is a worldwide company, operating in Asia, Europe and the Americas. The management consists of Chris Trew, who is the founder of Straris and has over 10 years’ experience in Enterprise IT, and Policarpo Guerrero who is director of operations and has worked with both Nokia and Kodak in the past. Overall the team seems highly skilled and well experienced, with members of the team having plenty of experience in cryptos as well as traditional companies.
Another notable member of the team is Nicolas Dorier, who wrote NBitcoin and has also worked directly on the Bitcoin Core code and has even written a book called “Blockchain Programming in C#”.
Trading Information
Stratis had it’s ICO in June 2016 and raised a total of 915 Bitcoin. It had a relatively mundane start to life and held a value of around $0.10 until it shot up to $10 in May of 2017 but corrected back down to roughly $2 the month after. It then enjoyed a rise as Bitcoin surged in later 2017.
The Stratis Coin (STRAT) has a lot of potential to be a very good long term hold. If more companies start to use their platform and if they manage to achieve a widespread adoption of their service then the Stratis price could be subject to an enormous rise.
How to Buy Stratis Tokens (STRAT Coin)
You can buy and trade STRAT on many different exchanges. There is usually a need to buy Bitcoin or Ethereum first and use that to trade Stratis token. We’d recommend using Coinbase or Coinmama if you’re looking to buy Bitcoin or Ethereum with Fiat currencies (USD EURO etc).
Read More: Coinbase Review – Is Coinbase Safe?
When you have your Ethereum or Bitcoin, we’d recommend to head over to Binance or HitBTC to buy your Stratis.
Stratis is also available at the following exchanges:
How to Store Stratis Tokens (STRAT Coin)
There are multiple ways to store Stratis tokens, some of which include staking. If you want to earn “interest” on your investment then you need the Stratis Staking wallet, Stratis X. This is the only way to stake your Stratis.
Another way to store STRAT is to use the Stratis Electrum Wallet. This is a desktop wallet developed by the Stratis team that is an official copy of the Electrum Bitcoin wallet. It doesn’t connect to the Blockchain, is fairly simple to set up and is very lightweight.
The Ledger Nano S is currently the only hardware wallet that supports Stratis storage. It can hold a range of coins, not just Stratis and is one of the most secure ways of storing cryptocurrency.
There is also a wallet in development called the Breeze wallet. This is only available to select members but you can try it out on the Stratis Testnet.
Competition
Lisk – List is another company that is aiming to deliver sidechains for smaller businesses and are using Javascript as their programming language. Seeing as most of the web uses Javascript, Lisk is a strong competitor for Stratis and currently has roughly double the market cap.
In addition to Lisk, Rise, Ark and even Ethereum are offering somewhat similar solutions to what Stratis is trying to accomplish.
Our Opinion on Stratis
We think that the Stratis platform has a lot of potential and is already showcasing that it is going to be a real player in the BaaS market. The ability for companies to use the sidechains and have an ICO platform is very attractive and we think if Stratis starts to get more attention they will do very well. The development team, led by Chris Trew, show massive enthusiasm and have strong backgrounds in many relatable fields.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Strong team with enthusiastic CEO and lots of experience.
Great concept and some innovative ideas such as the Stratis Academy.
Potential to earn extra money by staking the STRAT token with the Stratis X wallet.
What is operational of the Stratis academy at the moment is very good and offers a lot of content and help for developers using the Stratis platform. This is very valuable and is a great incentive for new users to start their projects using Stratis rather than a competitor.
Cons
A lot of strong competition – from Ethereum to Lisk and even down to Risk and Ark, there are many very strong companies doing impressive work in the same areas. We think the enterprise market is large enough for several BaaS projects to work so whilst this isn’t idea for Stratis, it is far from the end of the world.
Still a lot to develop – The ICO platform is currently not fully operational amongst a few other features. Stratis has big plans and so far has delivered on everything they’ve promised so we’re hopeful for the future, however a plan is never the same as a finished project.
Conclusion
Overall we think that Stratis is one of the most interesting BaaS projects around right now. There is a lot of competition but with such a huge potential market we think that there is enough room for many companies like Stratis.
Their blockchain development platform and the Stratis Academy are fantastic features that have huge potential to help new clients makes sense of an often confusing new technology. If Stratis manages to grow and scale we can see them being incredibly successful.