Iain.McCain

Stratis Monthly #5

The month of June focused on the delivery of the Sidechain Masternode release for the Cirrus Sidechain. This delivery was successfully made on-time on the 1st July 2019, allowing anyone to perform cross-chain transfers and actively begin developing Smart Contracts in C# to deployed on the Cirrus Sidechain.

Development Update

A total of 53 commits were made during the month of June, this encompassed 131 file changes and 4,217 additional lines of code. A summary of the key developments can be found below.

  • Introduction of time off-setting and WAN emulation within Stratis Coherence Suite
  • Improvements to feedback from the Address Indexer
  • Enhanced logging for several components of the Full Node
  • Optimizations to Address Indexer
  • Development of Stratis Masternode Dashboard
  • Revisions to the exchange of peer address data during node handshake
  • Additional diagnostic API endpoints
  • Improvements to feedback from the Collateral Checker
  • Corrections to accuracy of wallet staking balance
  • Increased throughput possible for federation wallet transactions
  • Efficient signing of larger transactions

In addition to the development of the platform, the business development team have been busy engaging with prospective clients and organizations within the blockchain space.

Stratis working with global provider of market intelligence, IDC

Stratis is playing its part in the debate on the development of blockchain technology and the wider market. We are working with International Data Corporation (IDC), a global provider of market intelligence and advisory services for the technology market.
Many of the world’s largest enterprises use input and advice from IDC to make technology buying decisions and formulate strategy. Stratis is a member of IDC’s Research Innovation Council on blockchain, where it contributes alongside some of the technology sector’s best known and most innovative companies.
According to a report earlier this year from IDC, Worldwide Semiannual Blockchain Spending Guide, worldwide spending on blockchain solutions is forecast to be nearly $2.9 billion in 2019, an increase of 88.7% from the $1.5 billion spent in 2018. IDC expects blockchain spending to grow at a robust pace over the 2018-2022 forecast period with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 76.0% and total spending of $12.4 billion in 2022.

Stratis presents to Industrial Bank of Korea

Stratis presented our DLT Solution to 75 delegates from Industrial Bank of Korea, headquartered in Seoul, South Korea.

South Korea is a hot spot for DLT technologies and this was a valuable opportunity for us to showcase our products and services in front of one of Asia’s most influential financial services groups.
We are also discussing future opportunities to present to similar trade delegations from major businesses in sectors such pharmaceuticals, healthcare and financial services.
With the launch of our Cirrus Sidechain Masternodes this month, it will now be easier, cheaper and faster for developers to build DLT and Smart Contract functions bespoke to their business needs. Stratis is committed to making it easy for businesses to adopt blockchain solutions and we believe our technology can greatly benefit large enterprises and financial services companies as well as government organisations whose systems operate within Microsoft’s .NET framework.

Stratis attends All-Party Parliamentary Group on Blockchain

To keep up with the latest thinking on the impact of blockchain, Stratis is participating in the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Blockchain. We have attended evidence sessions at Westminster to gain insights from contributors from all corners of the industry.
The APPG states that its mission is: “To ensure that industry and society benefit from the full potential of blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies (DLT) making the UK a leader in blockchain/DLT’s innovation and implementation.”
Sessions this year have looked at blockchain and finance, the creative industries, next-generation services, healthcare, energy and environment. Members of parliament, government officials and industry leaders attended the sessions and have been presented demonstrations of real-world blockchain applications designed to educate policymakers.
As blockchain is becoming increasingly mainstream, it is vital that the benefits of the technology are highlighted to government organisations and businesses and we look forward to contributing to the APPG in the future.

Stratis listed in influential EU Blockchain initiative

Stratis was recently listed in the European Union Blockchain Observatory and Forum. The project was launched in 2018 to accelerate blockchain innovation and the development of the blockchain ecosystem in the EU and to help cement Europe’s position as a global leader in this transformative new technology.
Its mission is to monitor blockchain initiatives in Europe, produce a comprehensive source of blockchain knowledge, create a forum for sharing information and opinion and make recommendations on the role the EU could play in blockchain.
Observatory and Forum partners include ConsenSys, the University of Southampton, the Knowledge Media Institute at the Open University, University College London, and the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences.
Stratis is listed on the organization’s website as an open source project, multinational in scope, with a long-term vision to develop blockchain technology in C# on Microsoft’s .NET framework.
The Observatory and Forum’s June newsletter includes publication of an academic paper on Blockchains and Digital Assets Blockchains and Digital Assets by the University of Southampton. One of its conclusions is that “appropriate regulation is positive and will benefit all actors”.

Stratis SRC-20 Token Issuance Contract

We are pleased to announce that the SRC-20 Standard Token Issuance contract has been voted into the whitelist by the community operated masternodes and is now deployable on the Cirrus Sidechain. This enables anyone to deploy their own token on the Cirrus Sidechain that can then be utilised to meet many different use-cases.
Deploying your own token from within Cirrus Core is simply achieved via the Smart Contracts tab within the wallet.

Enter the ByteCode of the approved contract, located on the merged pull request and supply the token parameters to define the Token Supply, Token Name and Token Ticker.

Select Create Contract and you have successfully deployed your own SRC20 Token on the Cirrus Sidechain.
More information regarding the deployment of a token and guidance for Smart Contract developers can be found in the below document.
Stratis Smart Contracts Developer Guide
Cirrus Core 2.0 will also be released in the coming weeks, bringing one-click token issuance and full token management allowing you to manage issued tokens with ease.

Cirrus Sidechain & Smart Contracts in C#

Today marks a major milestone for Stratis with the launch of our Cirrus Sidechain Masternodes and Stratis Smart Contracts in C#.
Stratis becomes the world’s first blockchain to offer businesses and developers the ability to execute smart contracts on the Microsoft.NET core architecture. Allowing C# developers to develop auditable Smart Contracts and be confident with the results as true C# code is executed on-chain.
This release follows a successful two-week community testing phase during which Masternode Operators were able to familiarise themselves with operating a Sidechain Masternode and interacting with the Cirrus Sidechain.
The launch of the Cirrus Sidechain extends functionality for businesses operating on the Stratis platform. It includes the first smart contracts platform built entirely from the ground up in native C# on Microsoft’s .NET framework, combining the most popular enterprise programming language and the most widely-used enterprise framework.
As a result of this release, two new wallets are now available to be installed for end-users. Firstly, Stratis Core has been updated to fully support transfers to the Cirrus Sidechain, as well as incorporating the latest release of the Stratis Full Node. The second wallet sees the release of the Cirrus Core wallet, allowing users to create and manage a wallet, interact with Smart Contracts, deploy Smart Contracts and perform cross-chain transfers back to the Stratis Mainchain.
You can now make transfers to the Cirrus Sidechain from your Stratis Core wallet by entering the mainchain federation address and entering your Cirrus address generated from the Cirrus Core Wallet

Mainchain Federation Address: yU2jNwiac7XF8rQvSk2bgibmwsNLkkhsHV


The Cirrus Token can then be safely exchanged back to the Stratis Token via the Send to Mainchain dialog within Cirrus Core by entering the Sidechain Federation Address.

Sidechain Federation Address: cYTNBJDbgjRgcKARAvi2UCSsDdyHkjUqJ2


Expect to see more exciting news coming from Stratis as new contracts are developed and deployed onto the Cirrus Sidechain.
Download links to the newly released wallets can be found below

Stratis Core

https://github.com/stratisproject/StratisCore

Cirrus Core

https://github.com/stratisproject/StratisCore

Stratis Monthly #4

As we move closer to the release of the Stratis Sidechain Masternodes, we have progressed extremely well with the current focus almost exclusively centring on testing and finalizing any outstanding items prior to the community testing phase.

Development Update

A total of 109 commits were made during the month of May, this encompassed 392 file changes and 14,219 additional lines of code. A short summary of the developments relating to the Stratis Sidechain Masternodes can be found below.
• Improvements to wallet transaction tracking
• Enhance the stability of the peer connectivity
• Reduction in indexing resource consumption
• Implementation of ‘burning’ STRAT for Sidechain withdrawals
• Optimization of the Federation wallet
• Introduction of a dynamic fee/reward for Masternodes
In addition to the core development, work has also been undertaken to deliver an additional wallet catering for the Cirrus Sidechain. A preview of the Cirrus Core wallet can be found below.

The Coherence Suite plays a pivotal role in allowing us to test edge cases within short timeframes. When testing many interconnected blockchain nodes it is important to monitor the overall network health through log interrogation. Contrary to the single instance scenario where a number of log files are relatively small, the whole network log monitoring is a more involved task.
Utilizing the Exception Viewer tool within  the Coherence Suite, the log monitoring begins before the node itself has started. A precise design of the NLog configuration targets specific components with additional tracing provided by Fody.
When the nodes are running, we periodically execute a scan across the whole network and automatically classify logs based on predefined rules. This approach allows us to pinpoint key areas of interest.

Stratis Sidechain Masternodes Update

We are pleased to announce the release of Cirrus Sidechain Masternodes will be on the 1st July 2019.
This release includes Stratis Smart Contracts in C# and will be made available for community testing two weeks prior on the 17th June 2019 to allow Masternode Operators to familiarize themselves with operating a Sidechain Masternode and to allow users to interact with the Cirrus Sidechain.
The community testing period is scheduled to last two weeks with the objective to receive valuable feedback. The network will then be restarted and announced as a full production release.

Stratis Monthly Update #3

April was an incredibly busy period at Stratis. With the continued development and testing of the Sidechain Masternodes being undertaken, there was a lot of preparation that went into exhibiting at the London Global Expo.

Development Update

During April it was agreed that we would bring the Sidechain codebase into the Full Node. This allowed development to progress whilst ensuring overall stability through the host of tests that are in place. A total of 76 commits were made to the codebase during April, this consisted of changes being made to over 350 files with 8,911 additions of code.
The development on the Full Node primarily focused on the Sidechains Masternode codebase, with the upcoming release both the development and testing teams have made significant progress in ensuring the Sidechain Masternodes are ready for release as soon as possible.
A summary of key developments during the month of April can be found below:

    • Enhanced shutdown sequence
    • Increased verbosity of Smart Contract logging
    • Experimentation of various database technologies to offer alternative storage options for clients
    • Enhanced throughput of cross-chain transfers
    • Stabilisation of the federation wallet and cross-chain transfers by achieving deterministic transaction creation
    • Improvements to transaction lookup performance

Utilization of the Stratis Coherence Suite across the development team is something that has been key during April. Testing the blockchain should never be limited to the validation of agreed node communication protocol. In the Stratis network there are two officially supported types of node implementations which behave slightly differently. This all makes low-level testing a crucial part of the overall delivery.
Stratis has extended the Wireshark Bitcoin Protocol Dissector to match changes introduced to Stratis Protocol on the top of original Bitcoin implementation. Stratis Protocol dissector is one of the primary tools we use when analysing and diagnosing issues between nodes at a network level.

The essence of the blockchain is the transactions which make up blocks. Since the transactions are represented as binary data in a HEX notation it would be very difficult to work with them in that format. The Stratis Transaction Builder is a tool that is used to provide a meaningful view of the individual blockchain transactions as well as help us create non-standard transactions.
The interface maps the parts of the transaction HEX to the decoded value so that when the transaction is edited using one of the human readable values the HEX code updates automatically.

Stratis impressed the crowds at “Blockchain Expo – Global” in London

2019 is all about acquiring enterprise customers for Stratis. After two years in development, all key modules of the Stratis platform went live in 2018, so the London edition of the Blockchain Expo global series of events was a great opportunity for Stratis to raise their profile on 25th/26th April.
Many visitors told us our stand was the best at the show. As a Platinum Sponsor of the event, Stratis was there in force, both on the booth and in the conference tracks.
Stratis subject matter experts, Paul Farrington and Rowan de Haas, presented “DLT for the Enterprise” and “Smart Contracts as Rules for Money – a Case Study” to packed arenas.

Rowan’s talk showcased work he recently led to put trade payments in the Construction Industry on the Stratis blockchain for Wildara, an Australian project management consultancy. The project demonstrated that the Stratis blockchain can automate Supply Chain payments as soon as deliveries for cement or any other project activities have been completed, removing administration, speeding the process and ensuring regulatory compliance for the parties involved.
The other item premiered by Stratis at the show was the Stratis Coherence Suite of testbed tools. As Stratis CEO, Chris Trew, observed:

When we developed the Stratis Platform we also built a testing suite optimized for blockchain, enabling us to move fast and provide transparency – we quickly realized this is something everyone building a blockchain network will need and the Stratis Coherence Suite was born.

The suite provides a set of viewers that can be dragged and dropped to provide real-time insight into areas such as network topography, chain status and node statistics, along with a set of transaction tools to create test data and aid investigation.
The Stratis team welcomed a continuous stream of visitors to the stand during both days of the expo, including many large enterprises interested in the value blockchain can bring to their businesses. Badges were scanned and every one of them has been followed up, with many conversations already in progress and meetings scheduled over the coming weeks. Based on the success in London, the team is already targeting a major event later in the year to take the Stratis experience to one of the other key regions of the world.
There was also additional collateral created for Stratis as a result of the London Expo, this included product specific leaflets, a promotional video and a number of giveaways to people visiting the stand. The promotional video can be found below, as well as all other collateral showcased at the expo.

Presentations

Rowan DeHaas – Stratis Smart Contracts as Rules for Money
Paul Farrington – Stratis DLT for the Enterprise

Leaflets

Stratis C# Full Node
Stratis Coherence Suite
Stratis DLT
Stratis ICO Platform
Stratis Smart Contracts in C#
Stratis Use Case – Gluon
Stratis Use Case – MediConnect
Stratis Use Case – Wildara

Sidechain Masternode Applications

As we move closer to the release of Sidechain Masternodes, we can now move onto the final stage of registration and define Federated Members for network creation.
During the registration process, there was a requirement to submit a STRAT address that contained the relevant amount of collateral for the selected Sidechain Masternode tier.
To complete the registration process, applicants must prove ownership of the collateral address that was originally provided. There will be a 5-day window in which the applicants can prove ownership of the collateral address.
This final step of registration will need to be undertaken between the 6th May 2019 and 10th May 2019.
To prove ownership, you will need to follow the below process.

      1. Ensure you still have your FederationKey.dat file and know the passphrase
      2. Identify the Collateral Address you provided during registration
      3. Send the collateral requirement to the collateral address you provided

If the collateral amount already exists within the provided collateral address, simply send the entire balance back to the provided address.
After the 10th May 2019, Federated Members will be defined for the Cirrus Sidechain.
Please note that in no instances will Stratis attempt to contact you requesting you to send funds to an address.

Stratis 2019 Development Roadmap

Today we are pleased to announce our development roadmap for the remainder of 2019. The roadmap focuses on both adoption of the Stratis Platform and an increase in utilization of the Stratis Token.

Java and JavaScript Support

Introducing support of new programming languages inherently increases the audience that the Stratis Platform appeals to. The addition of this support will enable a new development community who are not familiar with the Microsoft .NET Core framework to interact with and develop on the Stratis ecosystem.

Breeze Privacy Protocol for STRAT

The further development of the Breeze Privacy Protocol will include a new version of the Breeze Wallet with enhanced security. In addition, we are working on bringing Segregated Witness support to the Stratis network to enable native Privacy Protocol support.

Proof-of-Stake Sidechains

The introduction of further consensus algorithms for Stratis Sidechains will grant even more bespoke use-cases on the Stratis Platform. We envision the development of further consensus algorithms on Stratis Sidechains will negate the requirement for the forking of source code. This will drive collaboration and encourage development on the already established Stratis codebase.

Sidechain Masternodes

Stratis Sidechain Masternodes will enable holders of the Stratis Token to operate as a block producer on a Stratis Sidechain. The first Sidechain Masternodes will be on the Cirrus Sidechain network, these Masternodes will earn rewards from transactions fees and smart contracts executed on the network.

Stratis STO Platform

Whilst we firmly believe there is still a market for Initial Coin Offerings (ICO), Stratis will extend the functionality of the Stratis ICO Platform to cater for the regulatory requirements needed to conduct a Security Token Offering (STO).
The support for STO’s will also bring additional features to the ICO Platform, with the inclusion of the platform being Smart Contract aware. This will allow token issuance contracts to be utilized during a crowdfund.

Stratis Core 2.0

The release of Stratis Core 2.0 will incorporate new features that will enable interaction with other components within the Stratis ecosystem. The focus of this update is to continue to provide a simple user-experience from within the GUI, allowing users to manage their tokens and deploy new smart contracts with ease.
These features include:

  • Token awareness to cater for tokens issued on a sidechain
  • Validation and deployment of a smart contract
  • Voting capability to interact with deployed sidechains

Stratis Mobile Wallet

A mobile application that caters for the sending and receiving of the Stratis Token will be delivered for both Android and iOS. This mobile wallet will allow users to simply transact on their mobile device utilizing a secure, functional and elegant mobile application.

Stratis Payment Gateway

Stratis will develop a Payment Gateway that can be deployed by third-parties to utilize the STRAT token as a form of payment. The payment gateway will be designed to allow other tokens launching on the Stratis Platform to seamlessly implement the Stratis Payment Gateway for their requirements.

Unity SDK Integration

Unity is the creator of the world’s most widely used real-time 3D development platform. Stratis will provide an SDK for Unity developers, enabling the utilization of the Blockchain during game development. This unleashes a wide range of functionality for in-game token and asset markets where the blockchain is a perfectly suited technology.

The above development activities represent the core work that will take place at Stratis over the remaining course of this year. There are additional internal developments that we aim to deliver within the coming months, which will be detailed in due course.

Stratis Sidechain Masternodes

The application process for the Cirrus Sidechain Masternodes has now come to an end. A great amount of interest has been received which has resulted in a significant number of Masternodes being assigned. The development of the Sidechain Masternodes is also drawing to a close, making this a great opportunity to offer a lower-level explanation as to how the network will operate and also what features to expect.

On-Chain Voting

An important development of the Stratis Sidechains solution is the inclusion of on-chain voting. This enables dynamic management of the chain. On-chain voting can and will be further extended to cater for a wide variety of functionality on a sidechain. Currently the functionality is limited to the below.
• Request of Addition Federated Membership
• Request of Removal from Federated Membership
• Approval of a Smart Contract
• Disapproval of a Smart Contract

Operation

Operating a Masternode consists of running and maintaining two nodes, one for each network. These nodes are a little different from the Stratis Full Node and include additional features that allow for bi-directional communication between the respective chain nodes.
To ensure consistency, we have utilized PowerShell Core to deliver a deployment script, due to the cross-platform support that PowerShell Core brings. The script will configure and launch the two nodes required for Masternode operation, requiring user intervention, ensuring that any sensitive information is not stored locally or entered into a browser. Upon the release of the Masternode’s for the Cirrus Sidechain, full documentation will be provided.
Day-to-Day operation of the node can be performed via the Sidechain Dashboard. The dashboard provides an informative page detailing the Masternode’s activity and status. Allowing a Masternode operator to act upon outstanding votes on the network, increase logging for troubleshooting and display wallet balances for transaction fees obtained.
As time progresses, we aim to deliver a fully functional user-interface that behaves similar to wallet, catered for the operation of a Masternode.

Collateral

Ensuring the security of both the Stratis Mainchain and Cirrus Sidechain whilst incentivising the operation of nodes is something that is very important for both Stratis and the operators of a Masternode. As a direct result of received feedback, we have successfully implemented an additional consensus rule that will validate the balance of a given collateral address on the Stratis Mainchain. This crucial development ensures that Masternode operators can continue to stake their collateral, inherently further securing the Stratis Mainchain whilst actively operating a Sidechain Masternode on the Sidechain.
During the registration process, you would have provided a STRAT address that contained the amount of collateral required for the relevant Masternode. This address will be tied to your public key, upon the production of a block, a check will be made ensuring that the balance remains above the set collateral amount. If the balance of the provided address does not meet the collateral requirement a block will not be produced. If this continues for subsequent blocks, the public key will be removed from the Federation. If this occurs, you will have to perform a new registration on-chain, this request is then approved by the remaining Federated Members. Once 51% of existing Federated Members vote for the addition, the public key will be included in the next cycle of block production.

How do I get Cirrus Tokens?

The Cirrus Sidechain is a Two-Way Federated Peg, meaning that it is connected with the Stratis Mainchain. Therefore, each Cirrus Token maintains a 1:1 ratio with the Stratis Token. Along with the release of the Sidechain Masternode’s there will be an update performed to Stratis Core, this update will introduce a new tab that will enable you to transfer STRAT from the Stratis Mainchain to the Cirrus Sidechain, crediting you with 1 CRS Token per each STRAT transferred.

Stratis Monthly #2

Another month has passed since our initial monthly update. This month the focus has primarily revolved around the development of the Sidechain Masternode.

Full Node Development

During the month of March, the Stratis Full Node team has delivered 2 releases. A total of 124 Pull Requests were merged into the codebase during this period.
Development for the most part continued to focus on stability and performance of the Full Node. In addition, attention has been drawn to RPC capabilities to ensure readiness of exchanges transitioning to the Full Node. This is a crucial step in moving to a network secured entirely by the Stratis Full Node.
The most notable changes and enhancements to the Full Node is listed below:

  • Addition of RPC methods for exchange support
  • Addition of various API endpoints
  • Denial-of-Service prevention
  • Improvements to the node’s Peer-to-Peer layer
  • On-going improvements to our unit and integration test suite
  • Reduced memory footprint

The latest version of the Stratis Core wallet contains the 3.0.3 version of the Full Node and can be obtained from our wallets page below.
Stratis Wallets

Sidechain Development

The development of Masternode features is nearing completion, including key developments to greatly improve the end-user experience.
Major developments during March can be found below:

  • Added functionality to Sidechain Dashboard
  • Creation of PowerShell Core setup script
  • Design of on-chain registration
  • Implementation of collateral management
  • Implementation of voting endpoints

A preview of the Sidechain Dashboard can be found below, the dashboard will be used to monitor and manage the Sidechain Masternode.

Privacy Protocol for STRAT

As mentioned in our community Discord last week, we are actively developing a Privacy Protocol solution for STRAT.
The further development of the Privacy Protocol will include a new version of the Breeze Wallet with enhanced security. In addition, we are working on bringing Segregated Witness support to the Stratis network to enable native Privacy Protocol support.
These are exciting developments that will bring further utility to the Stratis Token, offering the ability to improve the level of privacy with the STRAT token.

Full Node on Microsoft Azure

As a result of our relationship with Microsoft we received a Tweet from the Microsoft Azure twitter account highlighting the Stratis Full Node’s availablility on the Azure Marketplace.

London Blockchain Expo Global 2019

In less than four weeks, the Blockchain Expo Global 2019 will kick off. It’s an exciting time for us particularly as we will be arriving with several innovations under our belt. The Blockchain Expo Global is all about showcasing where blockchain is heading, and we have speakers scheduled to talk about two key Stratis technologies: Smart Contracts and DLT.

Stratis is once again a Platinum Sponsor for this event and will be showcasing our newly designed booth and can be found on stand 461.
Be sure you visit by obtaining a ticket from https://blockchain-expo.com/global/

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