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A USD 50,000 prize pool has been made available to celebrate the launch of the first wSTRAX liquidity pool, rewarding those who add liquidity to wSTRAX/ETH pair pool. As detailed in our recent InterFlux v2 post, Stratis’s
A USD 50,000 prize pool has been made available to celebrate the launch of the first wSTRAX liquidity pool, rewarding those who add liquidity to wSTRAX/ETH pair pool. As detailed in our recent InterFlux v2 post, Stratis’s
Wrapped tokens are a valuable source of liquidity and flexibility for blockchain interoperability. Over time, any network’s available throughput and general fee levels will fluctuate. Having wrapped tokens available on a separate blockchain network allows transacting to occur via alternate channels. Wrapped tokens also have access to the respective capabilities of the networks they exist on.
wSTRAX implements a wrapped token on the Ethereum network, leveraging the ubiquitous ERC-20 standard for token contracts. Each wSTRAX is equivalent in value to 1 STRAX. wSTRAX is created by the InterFlux MasterNodes collaboratively, rather than any single entity being responsible for minting the tokens. When a request is made to transfer STRAX to its wSTRAX equivalent on the Ethereum network, the transaction is autonomously detected and processed. Enabling the minting of required wSTRAX tokens and distribution handling to the respective Ethereum address to be undertaken seamlessly.
A minting transaction is submitted to the Stratis InterFlux Ethereum Masternode MultiSig wallet contract. A majority decision is required to confirm the transaction’s validity before being broadcasted to the Ethereum network. Once this happens, the wSTRAX will appear in the destination account’s balance and be transacted with any other ERC-20 token.
The initial version of Stratis InterFlux includes transacting with a wrapped STRAX token on the Ethereum network.
For this to be accomplished, the corresponding STRAX is secured by the Federation MultiSig for the wSTRAX token’s lifetime.
It should be noted that the system as described ensures that every wSTRAX token is backed by its equivalent value. In other words, there can’t be more wSTRAX in existence than the funds in the InterFlux Gateway wallet. In the future, CRS will be convertible to wSTRAX via a conversion contract on the InterFlux Hub network.
To allow blockchain interoperability between networks, a mechanism is required for bridging the networks. The InterFlux architecture will consist of multiple gateways that interface with a node on both interoperating networks. A high-level overview can be seen below.
The gateways listen for interoperability requests initiated against the InterFlux contracts on each network. For example, suppose an Ethereum node needs to invoke a Stratis C# Smart Contract method. In that case, it sends a transaction to the Ethereum InterFlux contract with the details of the invocation (e.g. Cirrus contract address, method name, parameters).
Once the invocation request is received, one of the Stratis InterFlux Gateways actions a transaction on the interconnected network. If there are any applicable return values, these are stored in the transaction receipts. The gateway then makes a further transaction on the original network to store the interoperability request results.
Sunday(14/02/21)-Monday(15/02/21): Interflux Masternode setup.
Tuesday(16/02/21): Interflux enabled wallet release (Ethereum Ropsten).
Wednesday(03/03/21): Interflux Masternode setup (Ethereum Mainnet).
Monday(08/03/21): Interflux enabled wallet release (Ethereum Mainet).
Please note this schedule is dependent on the results of the community testing.
The ICO funding model became hugely popularized in 2017, raising over $10B, primarily due to a significant uptake in up and coming projects utilizing the ICO model to fund their project aspirations. Stratis was certainly no different and performed their ICO in June 2016, raising just shy of 1000 BTC enabling the development of the Stratis Platform and Technologies that are readily available today. In 2018 the ICO Funding Model trend continued, with over 2000 ICO’s concluding; however, a new term coined in 2018 was STO, a Security Token Offering. An STO defined a similar funding model to that of an ICO but was developed with regulatory body adherence in mind, to ensure compliance with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Fast-forward two years, and it is clear that ICOs are not as prevalent as they once were in previous years. Instead, a blockchain-based funding model geared toward accommodating traditional practices has continued to evolve from the initially coined term STO. With conferences explicitly focusing on the utilization and adoption of STOs and promoting collaborative innovation, the future for STOs unquestionably looks bright. Furthermore, regulatory bodies and specific governments have now begun to make amendments to embrace and leverage technological advances achieved through the use of STOs. Such modifications to regulations make it possible for securities to become digitized, superseding the somewhat aged physical paper certificate process. The endorsement of STOs from regulatory bodies unleashes a wealth of benefits for organizations; such benefits include:
Stratis is all too aware of the benefits associated with blockchain-based crowd-funding, especially STOs and the power of digitizing non-fungible assets. Over the past months, Stratis has been quietly building an Asset Management Toolkit, geared to cater to those seeking to leverage the power of blockchain-based technology and the digitization of physical assets. Stratis has built and incorporated features necessary to gain approval from regulatory bodies in the United States through its partners’ progress with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The platform, paired with Stratis’ expertise in blockchain technologies, enables Stratis to provide a truly unique platform that delivers on the requirements set forth from both a regulatory standpoint and a user-experience point of view.
In addition to Stratis’ development of their functional STO Platform, Stratis has also packaged and delivered a claims-based Self-Sovereign-Identity solution. The Stratis STO Platform already comes with native Stratis Identity 2.0 integration, providing a genuine blockchain-based platform; removing user management requirements in an external database; everything is accomplished on-chain utilizing Stratis’ Blockchain Technology. Stratis Identity 2.0 delivers a full end-to-end solution for decentralized authentication and authorization. Of course, Stratis’ Identity 2.0 also adheres to the OAuth 2.0 and OIDC standards to ensure simplicity when integrating into third-party services for both authorization and authentication. Essentially, it is an IAM (Identity and Access Management) on the blockchain. Users can seamlessly sign in to various applications and websites using Stratis single sign-on the server without using passwords. They can also obtain and present claims about their identity enabling decentralized identity management. Personally identifiable information (PII) is not stored in third-party databases and managed only by the individual owning that information.
Stratis is always intent on providing solutions that ease digital transformation, and as a result, Stratis has officially released its STO Platform source-code on its GitHub organization. Thus, enabling anyone to leverage the platform immediately without any interaction with Stratis; however, as expected, Stratis is always available to provide support and advisory services. Stratis is the first to do this; offering a platform, free of charge, enabling both established businesses and start-ups with the ability to leverage a proven platform.
The Stratis STO Platform is immediately available with source-code being made available on their GitHub page below.
https://github.com/stratisproject/STOPlatform
Unity is a cross-platform game engine with a built-in IDE developed by Unity Technologies. It is used to develop video games for web plugins, desktop platforms, consoles and mobile devices. It is arguably, one of the most popular gaming engines currently available along with Unreal and GameMaker.
Scripts for Unity are primarily written in C#, and hence it attracted a lot of attention from the Stratis development team. Stratis envisages gaming to become one of the first real use cases for blockchain integration, making games more immersive, private and decentralized. It can blur boundaries between games and push power into the user’s hands.
Stratis platform features smart contracts which can be used in games. Using smart contracts will enable some exciting features in games that may have not been explored before or were highly centralized. One of the most common examples of it would be tokenization. Gamers are very much familiar with this concept. In-game gold tokens can now be purchased with real fiat currency. However, these tokens are highly centralized and cannot be efficiently utilized across games.
Stratis Platform has published unity specific packages that target .NETStandard 2.0 Framework allowing them to be used for various application development platforms such as Unity, Xamarin, ASP.NET etc. The packages currently available are:
More packages will be made available as required. These packages should allow developers to utilize most of the features of the Stratis Platform, including Smart Contracts in C#.
Stratis’ Unity SDK will be unveiled in the new year, incorporating full documentation and additional API’s specifically targeted at those utilizing Stratis Technologies within Unity Game development. Also, Stratis is excited to announce that their upcoming hackathon will focus on building games within Unity using the Stratis Unity SDK. Stratis has already created a gaming development focused channel within its Discord Server to ignite thought-provoking conversations to prepare for the official hackathon announcement.
5. Navigate to Scripts section and add a new script
This should open your new C# script in an IDE of your choice, such as Visual Studio.
Now it is time to bring Stratis packages in to add some blockchain functionality to our game. Right-click on the solution in the solution explorer and select Manage NuGet Packages. This should open NuGet Package Manager.
Make sure preview packages option is ticked (currently NETStandard Stratis packages are in preview only).
Now you can code using standard Stratis Features. Once you are done with your script, you can close IDE, and the script will be available in your Unity project. If you have any errors, please follow this article to resolve NuGet package issues https://jonfoust.medium.com/using-gcp-nuget-packages-with-unity-8dbd29c42cc4.
In most cases, you will need to operate a node to interact with Stratis or Cirrus network. It is improbable that developers would be running a node inside a game. It is recommended to host an external node that exposes specific API endpoints that the game would call. You could have a node that allows interaction with a specific smart contract.
Even though the game may not necessarily have a node running, you could still generate all the addresses, fund them outside the game and use offline transactions to propagate to a node.
Here is an example of the basic gaming setup, where a game can use basic blockchain functionality locally and interact with an external node via API to get more advanced functionality.
The presence of heterogeneous environments is all too common within all types of organisations that leverage IT infrastructure. Historically, and even now, compatibility can be achieved with the use of shims; providing a layer of compatibility through communication interception. The emergence of several successful blockchain platforms presents the same historical issues and requires a similar solution that offers and provides interoperability between mainstream blockchain platforms; enter Stratis InterFlux.
In Stratis’ previous blog post, announcing the release of Stratis InterFlux, the Non-Fungible Token (NFT) use-case was described; explaining how a Layer-2 Solution is provided. Stratis InterFlux will offer several methods for transacting between, offering varying levels of scale, throughput and privacy. This is crucial as each use-case can dictate a variety of requirements; therefore, flexibility is vital to ensure Stratis can provide an optimal solution for any viable use-case that is presented to them. More information regarding the different methods Stratis’ InterFlux provides will be publicly announced in due course.
Stratis is also very keen on bringing DeFi use-cases to reality for Bitcoin. Similarly to the integration with Ethereum and HyperLedger Fabric; Stratis InterFlux will be leveraged to establish a bond between the Cirrus Sidechain and Bitcoin. Thus enabling trustless exchanges of Bitcoin for wBTC on the Cirrus Sidechain and laying the foundation for DeFi use-cases. The introduction of a wrapped stable coin(s) will provide the needed liquidity; such as Ethereum’s USDT (Tether) which is tied to the US Dollar. Stratis is also exploring an opportunity with a UK Consortium to launch a GBP stable coin on the Cirrus Sidechain.
Over the next week, Stratis will be engaging with Stratis Masternodes. They will begin to configure and validate the communication bridge, provided by Stratis InterFlux, between the Cirrus Sidechain and Ethereum blockchain. The week commencing 28th December 2020 will see the launch of wSTRAX on an Ethereum chain, followed by two weeks of community testing.
After the successful launch of the Stratis Sidechain Masternodes and the associated Dynamic Membership feature that enables anyone to join, Stratis has put together a FAQ to iron out any questions that potential new Masternode Operators may have.
A Stratis Sidechain Masternode performs validation and execution of Smart Contracts on Stratis’ Smart Contract Sidechain, Cirrus. Stratis is the only platform offering native C# Smart Contract execution. Stratis delivers a fully distributed and decentralized managed execution environment through its Smart Contracts in C# on the Cirrus Sidechain.
Each block on the STRAX Blockchain, 9 STRAX is reserved for Masternode Rewards, every 45 seconds. This equates to 17,280 STRAX being distributed to active Masternode Operators, every day.
Yes, the collateral requirement is 100,000 STRAX.
Yes, there is a 500 CRS fee.
No, anyone can be a Stratis Sidechain Masternode, providing they meet the defined requirements.
Yes. https://www.stratisplatform.com/2020/11/20/strax-sidechain-masternodes-dynamic-membership/
Support is offered via the Stratis Discord. https://discord.com/invite/9tDyfZs
No, the wallet containing the collateral can be safely and securely removed from the device or service that is hosting your Stratis Sidechain Masternode, once the registration is complete.
Yes, we advise that you regularly install Operating System security updates in a managed manner. Updates to the underlining Stratis Sidechain Masternode codebase will be communicated via Discord.
An auto-kicking feature is enabled on the Cirrus Sidechain to ensure consistent block times. If your Masternode does not produce a single block in a 48hr period, your registration will be voided. You can, of course, re-join the Cirrus Sidechain as a Masternode Operator; however, the 500 CRS fee will apply again.
Yes, we would recommend the user has a good knowledge of security when staking.
There is no locking period. You can stop running your Stratis Sidechain Masternode as you please.
No. You can only use a Windows OS, but in the future, we do plan to offer support for macOS and Linux thanks to the native cross-platform support available through utilizing Microsoft .NET Core.
Stratis is excited to announce an updated Development Roadmap for the remainder of 2020 and heading into H1 of 2021. The below graphic highlights the upcoming developments from Stratis and their target deliverable timelines.
As highlighted in our recent news item, Introducing InterFlux. Ethereum support will be introduced to Stratis InterFlux, enabling ‘wrapped’ STRAX on the Ethereum Blockchain.
The STO & Digital Asset Platform embodies the tools required to both perform and manage either a token offering, whether that be fungible or non-fungible.
Stratis Unity Development Kit will enable game developers to integrate Stratis Blockchain Technology, allowing games to leverage non-fungible tokens and decentralized identities to manage in-game items efficiently.
The Blockchain IoT Market is projected to grow exponentially over the coming years. The Stratis IoT Development Kit will enable businesses to utilize an ultra-lightweight Stratis Blockchain Client to integrate into their existing IoT devices.
Stratis has already begun developing Smart Contracts in C#, utilizing Stratis’s Blockchain Technology. These contracts will be the foundation of an ever-growing repository of DeFi-based Smart Contracts.
There have been many advances with Proof-of-Stake algorithms. Stratis will introduce features that further security-levels and introduce new features to benefit those securing the network.
Python is well renowned as a powerful programming language. Stratis’s introduction of a Python Development Kit will enable experienced Python Developers to interact with Stratis Blockchain Technologies with ease.
Stratis’s deployment of a Mobile Application, leveraging a fully decentralized exchange on the Cirrus Sidechain will facilitate the trading of SRC20 Tokens and others token standards in a genuinely trustless manner.
The Stratis Mobile Wallet will be further developed to support tokens issued upon the Cirrus Sidechain. This development enables users to secure their tokens safely and securely on their mobile devices.
The enablement of Stratis System Contracts will provide a means to supersede historic off-chain logic and re-introduce such logic on-chain with the use of System Contracts. This development will bring simplification to user-driven processes providing a greater experience to those interacting with the Stratis Blockchain Technologies.
A total amount of 5,000,000 STRAX has been set aside to fund developers building solutions, utilizing Stratis Blockchain Technologies. Stratis has been clear that the funds will be distributed in a fully trustless manner based upon community voting in favour of projects to receive funds to fuel development.
Stratis understand the need for Advanced Blockchain Solutions to leverage external and reliable data. Stratis Oracles will provide a fully distributed and decentralized service that can be leveraged by those building upon Stratis Blockchain Technologies.
On the 22nd of December 2020, Stratis will be releasing InterFlux, the blockchain-agnostic and open-source protocol for communication between public and private blockchain solutions. Stratis InterFlux already fully supports interoperability with IBM’s HyperLedger Fabric; however, the upcoming public release will also incorporate support for Ethereum, enabling bi-directional communication between both Stratis Blockchain Technology and the Ethereum ecosystem.
Stratis is very aware of developments that have taken place within the public-blockchain space. This has become prevalent with the exponential growth of decentralized finance (DeFi) offerings such as UniSwap, Maker and Curve. This focus has led to the further development of Stratis’ interoperability solution. Stratis InterFlux will provide interoperability between the Stratis (STRAX) Blockchain and the Ethereum blockchain, bringing xETH to Stratis Blockchain Technologies and, importantly, wSTRAX to the Ethereum Blockchain. In a nutshell, Stratis InterFlux enables a seamless exchange of the STRAX Token to an equivalent Token on the Ethereum Blockchain, a token known as wSTRAX. The wSTRAX Token will fully leverage recent developments within the DeFi domain, taking advantage of rich liquidity pools and decentralized lending protocols available through Ethereum ecosystem.
Furthermore, Stratis InterFlux serves as a Layer-2 Scaling solution for existing Ethereum deployments. Using the management of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as an example, the exchange of multiple assets, and where necessary, bundling of assets presents challenges within the current Ethereum ecosystem. These fundamental challenges directly revolve around the transactional/computational cost of performing frequent transfers of tokens. Overcoming such challenges can be achieved efficiently through issuing a representative NFT using Stratis Blockchain Technologies, such as Sidechains. Thus providing genuinely predictable transactional costs whilst retaining trustlessness in a decentralized manner.
The development of an interoperability solution between Stratis Blockchain Technologies and IBM’s Blockchain Solutions, as with all Stratis’ products, was developed with extensibility in mind. Stratis InterFlux attests to that through the rapid support of another blockchain platform. Stratis is keeping a close eye on projects and ecosystems within the public-blockchain domain and is already targeting Binance Chain as an additional ecosystem to be supported by our interoperability solution.
Join Stratis’ ever-growing community to discuss the further advantages to the developments as mentioned above, and also, how the ‘wrapping’ of other blockchain tokens can offer additional benefit to Stratis Blockchain Technologies.
In this bumper issue of the Stratis monthly, we review our progress over December and January. As 2019 came to a close, we announced the launch of our STO Platform and the Stratis Mobile Wallet.
This momentum has continued into the new year with the announcement of a framework partnership with Triad Group – a major milestone for our corporate development – and the conclusion of the Stratis Smart Contracts Challenge.
If that wasn’t enough, we also have another development update in this issue, so get yourself comfortable, ready to enjoy this double monthly update.
Over the past months, development has focused primarily on ensuring that the platform is wholly ready for business adoption. This includes significant testing of components that will be critical within specific use-cases.
As part of this development, a new product has also been introduced, demonstrating how the Stratis Platform can cater for the supply chain use-cases. Stratis’ supply chain solution is a showcase that will be utilised to highlight how blockchain solutions can bring huge benefits to all parties within a traditional supply chain.
Following on from an update that was provided in November, an update on the outstanding roadmap items can be found below.
We will continue to focus on our existing sidechain implementation utilising the proof-of-authority consensus algorithm, this is primarily due to the level of decentralisation that is achieved through the utilised on-boarding process.
With the inclusion of dynamic membership, we can ensure that there is a diverse range of MasterNode operators providing the block production and transaction validation for individuals and organisations utilising Smart Contracts on a public chain.
This allows the current modal to scale and provide a high level of decentralisation and trust for both current and future sidechains.
Stratis Core has undergone a facelift to improve the user experience and provide a template to incorporate new and exciting features. The pre-release will be available next week for a round of community testing!
The Unity SDK and other technologies within the .NET Family are a significant focus for Stratis in 2020. Integration within the Unity development focus will continue to be a focal point for further development.
Expected: Q3
As mentioned in our previous update, the implementation of the Privacy Protocol for the Stratis network is reliant upon the successful integration and activation of SegWit. Development for SegWit is now code-complete, however, a significant amount of testing is required to ensure there is no unexpected behaviour introduced.
Unfortunately, this isn’t a quick process and requires some of the best minds at Stratis to ensure a wide variety of edge cases are assessed within a heterogeneous environment.
In addition, we are also exploring the option of activating SegWit on the Cirrus Sidechain to accelerate the process of activation on Stratis.
Expected: Q3
December saw Stratis take a great step forward with the launch of the STO platform, one of our key development roadmap milestones. We worked closely with clients to ensure the STO Platform is compliant with Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations, which enables businesses to raise capital by issuing legally permissible, asset-backed securities on the Stratis blockchain.
The response to the launch of the STO platform has been very encouraging and has already generated a great amount of interest in the community and from businesses.
To kick off 2020, we were delighted to sign an agreement with Triad Group, a leading UK provider of IT consultancy services and technology solutions. Triad is an established name in the digital consultancy sector and works with many prestigious clients across the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. We will work closely with Triad to identify where their clients would benefit from blockchain and then help them build business-specific applications on our flexible, easy-to-use platform.
Our first collaborative project is the development of a blockchain-based, end-to-end parcel tracking application, which had originally been designed by Triad on the Ethereum platform and has already been ported across to the Stratis platform.
Matthew Tallamy, Senior Consultant at Triad, has published two blogposts on his experience working with blockchain and why they chose Stratis. Parts one and two of the series can be viewed on LinkedIn.
The collaboration with Triad was many months in the making and is a significant endorsement of Stratis that will open new doors to multiple organisations and businesses. We look forward to a long and fruitful relationship.
The Stratis Hackathon was a huge success with nearly 200 developers registering to take part. The high standard and variety of entries was exceptional, making the judging panel’s job a very difficult one! After much deliberation, the judges revealed the top three winners, which are:
We would like to congratulate all of our winners and thank all participants that submitted entries. We look forward to many more hackathons in the future.
It has been great to see all the recent progress at Stratis recognised in the media across many outlets from global newswire Reuters, European publication Government Europa, to several crypto press outlets. This will only continue as we add further functionality to the Stratis platform and win new business.
Over the past month development has been progressing to bring SegWit (Segregated Witness) support to the Stratis blockchain, resulting in upgrades to the consensus, mempool and wallet features.
SegWit is an update to the transaction scripting layer that, among other things, increases the effective maximum transaction throughput.
The latest milestone to be achieved is the successful sending of SegWit transactions on the Stratis TestNet. You can find more detail below regarding the SegWit transactions in question, shown in an experimental version of the Stratis Core wallet:
Transaction 1 shown above, spends a legacy P2PKH (i.e. pay-to-pubkey-hash) input, and sends it to a native SegWit P2WPKH bech32 address (i.e. pay-to-witness-pubkey-hash).
https://chainz.cryptoid.info/strat-test/tx.dws?2232080.htm
Transaction 2 spends a native SegWit input, sending it to a SegWit address. This is therefore a fully native SegWit transaction with no legacy inputs or outputs.
https://chainz.cryptoid.info/strat-test/tx.dws?2232387.htm
These are the first encouraging steps to bringing SegWit support to the Stratis Mainchain, further development will continue, focusing on bringing SegWit support to our wallet implementations. The SegWit implementation will then undergo our full end-to-end testing procedure within our Stratis Coherence environment.
