Stratis’s interoperability solution, Stratis InterFlux, has become the first product under the Stratis Blockchain Technologies framework to incorporate Stratis’ Oracles feature. Through the introduction of Stratis’ Oracles, dynamic fee application has
Do you have a blockchain project or idea? Want to get that funded?
The Stratis Decentralized Accelerator (SDA) has over $13,000,000 available to incubate and fund projects through their initial development phase. Stratis understands the difficulties
Stratis InterFlux now fully supports the Ethereum blockchain, enabling seamless transitions from the native STRAX Token to wSTRAX. The launch of the wSTRAX ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain will coincide with a newly created liquidity pool on UniSwap between wSTRAX and ETH, enabling STRAX to take full advantage of UniSwaps automated liquidity protocol. Stratis has received confirmation of USD 150,000 being made available for the wSTRAX/ETH pool, allowing token holders to take immediate advantage of the UniSwap DEX. The wSTRAX token is not limited to UniSwap and can be leveraged, integrated and utilized on any DeFi solution or platform available on the Ethereum blockchain.
The two contracts controlling the issuance of wSTRAX on the Ethereum blockchain can be found below:
https://etherscan.io/address/0x14f768657135d3daafb45d242157055f1c9143f3
https://etherscan.io/token/0xa3c22370de5f9544f0c4de126b1e46ceadf0a51b
This process of transitioning from STRAX to wSTRAX is made seamless through integration into the latest STRAX Wallet offerings. Navigate to the send pane and select InterFlux as a destination to simply “swap” STRAX for wSTRAX in a trustless manner. Please be aware that there is a minimum STRAX Token amount enforced due to high fees on the Ethereum blockchain.
This release is accompanied by the latest STRAX Wallet release, available for all major operating systems. Download links can be found on the wallet page.
Join Stratis’s ever-growing community to discuss the further advantages of the developments mentioned above and how the ‘wrapping’ of other blockchain tokens can benefit Stratis Blockchain Technologies.
On the 23rd February, Binance organised a Stratis AMA with Our Founder and CEO Chris Trew on their Official English Telegram Channel.
Host: Q1: How does Stratis plan to compete against leading Smart Contract development platforms?
Answer: Through hard work, determination, and technical excellence, the Stratis Smart Contracts platform is the only platform in the world that provides native C# Smart Contract execution. A significant amount of research and development was allocated to building a platform that leveraged a feature-rich framework such as that offered by the Microsoft .Net Framework—resulting in a familiar and trusted development environment. This, coupled with breakthrough products such as Stratis InterFlux, which provides interoperability between Ethereum and other chains, such as Binance’s Smart Chain in the future, enables Stratis Platform to be leveraged both as a scaling solution and as alternative smart contract platform. This combined with simplified integration into existing financial applications and enterprise line of business applications that are developed utilising the .net framework gives Stratis a unique position in the marketplace.
Host: Q2: What are the benefits Stratis Masternode, can we touch on that topic?
Answer: By operating a Stratis Masternode, you play a role in validating and securing the Stratis Smart Contract Sidechain. Also, Masternodes validate cross chain transactions through Stratis InterFlux interoperability protocol. Each block validated by a Stratis Masternode is rewarded from a share of a block reward generated on the Stratis Mainchain (STRAX). This equates to, on average, 17,280 STRAX being autonomously distributed to operating Masternodes every day. To put this into context, if there were 50 operating Masternodes, each Masternode would be rewarded, on average, 345 STRAX per day.
As projects, such as the recent AMM style DEX OpDex, continue to build on the Stratis Platform and utilize Stratis Sidechain’s more rewards will be distributed through an uptake in utilization. Rewards will also be generated by other services hosted on the Stratis masternodes in future.
This masternode reward combined with staking provides a very competitive APY.
Host: Q3: How does Stratis intend to gain adoption?
Answer: Stratis is already engaging with several high-profile marketing organizations to cement Stratis’ name as the go to enterprise-ready PUBLIC Blockchain Technology platform and to build the awareness of Stratis within the wider crypto audience. The marketing efforts will be complemented by Stratis also interacting with huge .Net focused development groups and developer communities, creating rich development-focused content. Stratis will encourage development groups and individuals to build on our platform and support those who commit to building end-to-end solutions utilizing Stratis Technologies.
We are also solving some of the key hurdles that must be overcome to achieve mass adoption of blockchain and DeFi technologies, mainly interoperability, integration with existing systems and the use of class leasing development tools.
Host: Q4. Do you have any plans to work with the UK Government or large UK Corporations?
Answer: Stratis is headquartered and registered in the UK, we chose to incorporate Stratis in the UK, so we could work with local governments and other organisations that will only work with UK based companies. Stratis is focused on securing business within the UK and is working with several technology partners including Triad Group Plc, a leading IT Service provider in the UK. We are also discussing with a consortium of a top ten international law firm, an established global auditing company regarding a GBP stable coin utilizing Stratis Technologies and governed by a consortium of blue chip companies.
Host: Q5: What does Stratis plan to do in the coming months?
Answer: The coming months will see Stratis meet the development roadmap items which we have set forth on our roadmap. The DeFi Software Library excites me the most – introducing several highly utilized projects codebases to the Stratis Platform, showcasing our platform’s flexibility and validity while also providing practical use-case examples for new developers exploring Stratis Technologies. On the 8th of March we will be deploying InterFlux into production which will bring wSTRAX to Ethereum and all of the applications running on top e.g UNISWAP and other decentralised exchanges.
We are also very excited about our IOT SDK which will see us release an Ultra Light client and backend infrastructure to support IOT use cases which are highly in demand within the UK.
The Second Segment of the AMA, Chris picked 9 Questions from the public to answer
Q1: Smart contracts are prone to bugs, How efficient and secure is your smart contract. Have you ever been audited through external parties, so we are sure that this project is safe and good for the future of investors?
Answer: Our use of C# as a development language means that there is a much larger pool of developers (10M+) than other smart contract languages like Solidity, these means there are more developers that can potentially audit the code and those developers can utilise the same tools they used for previous development projects. We also have decentralised smart contract execution governance, this means smart contracts must go through and audit process and peer review before being able to be deployed on the network. This ensures that any smart contracts being executed by masternodes have received an audit.
Q2: Before the Bear market, Stratis was a top 10 coin & had over a billion dollar market cap. Since experiencing the devastating devaluation that struck the crypto world in 2018 why did the company decide to not just fold and walk away with all your money? What drives your decision to preserve, building and offering an even better platform (STRAX) to the crypto world? Having already experienced those highest highs and those lowest lows, do you feel wiser and better prepared about the future Stratis will exist in?
Answer: The bear market was a very difficult time, having only raised 600K USD we had to be very careful without funds and focused purely on developing our platform and products, rather than on marketing and trying to create hype. This did affect us, but has allowed us to deliver the same as projects that raised tens of millions with a much smaller budget. This has allowed us to stay agile and also keep our burn rate down.
We recently received an injection of capital form Tier one Crypto fund Alphabit, this capital is going to allow us to finally compete with our competitors in all areas including marketing.
The paste 4 years have been a great learning experience and I feel we are very well position to capitalise on the crypto/blockchain boom that is currently ongoing
Q3: Any plan for liquidity farming?
Answer: Yes, the project OpDex has been under development for over 1 year and just received 500,000 STRAX in funding from the Stratis Decentralised Fund. OpDex is an AMM style dex that will offer significantly lower fees than the current established decentralised exchanges and key features they are lacking. OpDex will be the main Liquidity platform at Stratis.
Q4: What does $STRAX think about DeFi’s current trend? Does $STRAX follow trends or make a difference? Can $STRAX share with users about future development plans?
Answer: Good question, when people ask I say we have been working on DeFi for 4 years, only the market has just caught up and termed the phrase “DeFi”. We have been working on building an enterprise grade platform that could support the next generation of decentralised finance. We will soon be releasing out DeFi library which will include documentation, API’s, easy access clients (Web brower/mobile). OpDex V1 is nearly ready and we expect testing to start soon.
Q5: Are there companies actually deploying applications on Stratis blockchain? Any initiatives in last year or this year that we might know of?
Answer: Yes, there are several companies building on top of the Stratis platform since we moved into being production ready. MediConnect are revolutionizing the pharmaceutical and PPE supply chains through the user of blockchain technologies powered by the stratis platform.
Gluon are utilising the blockchain to revolutionize the gas industry in the US through the user of blockchain for track/trace, Gas reserves monitoring, Point of sales integration and loyalty points. With over 150 gas stations signed up they have received significant traction.
OpDex is a Stratis DAO funded AMM type DEX and offers a real alternative to the existing decentralised exchanges through significantly lower fees and offering scalability well beyond the majority of AMM type Dex’s. We also have over 10 projects that have forked our code and run their own native chains.
As part of the two stratis hackathons, there are many examples of applications that can be built on Stratis. Due to our new business development focus we are talking with many companies that are interested in deploying the on Stratis platform, we expect to see exponential growth in this area in the coming months.
Q6: Besides coding languages, what is your approach to win market share versus other popular platforms?
Answer: One of our main strategies is utilising existing development and consultancy companies that do not currently offer any products or services around blockchain. They can join the Stratis partner program and receive training, access to closed source tech, free development and consultancy time.
This will then allow them to add blockchain to their service offerings and give them the ability to cross sell blockchain into their existing customer base, So it brings the consultancy company revenue through consultancy and development, it bring Stratis adoption and also companies that can sell our platform and products allowing us to focus on the platform development.
Q7: What kind of decisions will STRAX holders be able to make within the Stratis platform? Will they be only economic decisions or will they be able to decide in other areas as well?
Answer: All important decisions go through a decentralised vote, like the proposal to migrate from STRAT to STRAX.Our community also decide on which projects receive funding from the Stratis Decentralised fund.
Q8: What real solutions are you bringing to DeFi in Stratis, and what exact problems do you want to solve in DeFi?
Answer: Increased security through our auditability and decentralised smart contract governance. Simplified integration into existing CeFI and traditional finance systems developed in .net. Our ability to roll out network updates in a matter of hours allows us to react to economic and other changes. The tokenomics of STRAX mean the Masternodes executing smart contracts receive a significant reward regardless of gass fees, this allows us to have a significantly lower gas cost than the other smart contract platforms. This has an impact on well adopted DeFi apps like an AMM style DEX
Q9: Did you raise funds so far? If so, how did you handle them? Are you planning to do any future raises?
Answer: We raised 600K USD in 2016, the two projects that raised around the same time were waves (30,000 BTC) and LISK (15M USD). The fact we are even still here is a miracle and people have rightfully had concerns since the start that we would run out of money.
Stratis may not be as shiny as other new sexier projects, but one thing we have proven is that we can deliver with far less and we have the dedication that many other projects do not.
We have just received a capital injection and now finally have the resources to compete in areas other than development.
AMA Concluded
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
The way enterprises store and process data doesn’t stay static. New technologies disrupt the status quo. Imagine 10 years from now. It is not far-fetched to predict that ideas currently in their infancy will, by then, have established dominance. Blockchain, with its inherent redefinition of how valuable assets are stored and accessed is one of those technologies.
Blockchain, as devised for Bitcoin, was used to store an abstract asset. The network was public, provided a level of anonymity, and was decentralized in a way that fitted Bitcoin’s philosophy. However, enterprise assets often exist in the real world in a situation where there is good reason to know who has the rights to access the data. A dogmatic approach won’t work; developing blockchain for the enterprise requires that you cherry-pick blockchain innovations, and adapt them, on a case-by-case basis.
Stratis is positioned at the heart of the blockchain industry and its focus is the enterprise. So, let’s explore some of the ways we see blockchain and the enterprise coming together over the next few years.
Who to trust with your data can be an issue for enterprises, and this issue has led to enterprises not cooperating with other entities. In these situations, data can be duplicated from organization to organization while, at the same time, the risk of being out-of-sync with other data sources remains. Blockchain has been described as “trustless” largely because one of Bitcoin’s innovations was to enable you to transact with a level of anonymity; when everybody has an immutable copy of the data, that’s all you need to know who has what before and after a transaction. Although anonymity is not usually desirable on a blockchain designed for enterprises, the design behind an enterprise blockchain is still unique in that it reduces the level of trust required by participating organizations. Providing an environment where an enterprise can share data with an organization they do not “trust” showcases one of blockchain’s revolutionary cornerstones in an enterprise setting.
Enterprises need to work with official legislation. If the behaviour of the organization is called into question or in the case of a routine audit, it is fundamental that the data depicts the truth. The permissioned model often used by enterprise blockchain allows for a selective transparency. This enables regulatory bodies to hold and access sensitive data as and when required. However, transparency is not a blockchain’s only advantage here. The shared data approach can also help build towards a uniformed, standardized approach to regulation across an industry sector. Pioneering enterprises, who understand the need for regulation, can adopt a blockchain-based strategy which, for example, could receive widespread adoption relatively soon after 50% of the industry sector is signed up.
Sometimes blockchain and cryptocurrency tokens are mentioned as if they are inseparable. This isn’t the case. For some business models there is no requirement for a token, and Stratis can implement a DLT solution on a private network to suit these models. However, some enterprises might benefit from some form of token. The token could potentially be listed on a cryptocurrency exchange, on the other hand, it could have a more limited distribution. Rethinking the token as a store of value for enterprises could involve loyalty point schemes and micro-payments, with an emphasis on value and convenience for customers rather than speculation.
Blockchain innovations can also go hand-in-hand with other emergent technologies. The Internet of Things (IoT) is turning formerly dumb objects into sophisticated sensors capable of both streaming and processing data. Machine learning is being applied to these data flows to identify trends and discover previously hidden correlations and connections. A central question here is which method of data storage can facilitate this influx of data, which has such applicability to enterprises. The very fact the IoT opens so many possibilities makes the idea of holding it in traditional out-of-date data silos. Blockchain can, however, evolve with IoT.
Enterprises demand that technology serves them and brings visible benefits.
Adapting blockchain to create data solutions for enterprises requires a flexible mindset that takes the strengths of blockchain, as applicable to each case. Perhaps most importantly, blockchain also gives enterprises the opportunity to take another look at their data strategy in tandem with other players in their industry sector.
As mentioned in our Stratis Sidechain Masternode announcement last week, to progress the allocation of Masternodes for the Cirrus Sidechain, an application form would be made available to begin the enrolment process.
You can now apply to become a Masternode operator on the Cirrus sidechain by completing the form on the below page.
https://www.stratisplatform.com/sidechain-application/
You will need to run the Stratis KeyGen utility that can be obtained via the below link.
Stratis Keygen Utility
The application process will be available until the 31st March 2019.
In addition to making the application form available, Stratis has incorporated design changes to the collateral requirement for both Masternode Tiers. We are happy to announce the collateral will now be held within a Stratis Mainchain wallet allowing token holders to continue staking whilst securing the Cirrus Sidechain.
This decision was made based on the feedback from the community on the original announcement and enables holders of the Stratis token to continue gaining staking rewards on the Stratis Mainchain whilst operating a Masternode.
Information regarding the hardware requirements for operating a Masternode and key dates will be announced after the imminent major release of Stratis Core.
We are excited to announce that Stratis Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is now available as a production release. With a Stratis DLT solution, enterprise customers can deploy private, federated blockchain solutions that are capable of storing and tracking information other than the ownership of a cryptographic token.
Like the Stratis C# Full Node, Stratis DLT is written entirely in C# on the Microsoft .NET Framework. By leveraging the Stratis C# Full Node, a Stratis DLT solution enables enterprises to deploy performant, private and optimised blockchain solutions within their environments. In addition, the features you would expect from an enterprise offering are readily available, including rights assignment and scalability.
Chris Trew, CEO and Founder of Stratis Group Ltd stated:
This is a great achievement for Stratis, enabling Stratis Technologies to be flexible and meet the needs of organizations in both the private and public sectors that require a bespoke private solution.
Stratis is already working with customers to deploy DLT – for more information and to deploy the Stratis DLT solution in your business, contact the Stratis Consultancy team here.
Stratis is pleased to announce our latest partnership with the UK’s fastest growing online pharmacy, UK Meds.
UK Meds is the fastest growing online pharmacy in the UK, digitally handling between 3,000 and 4,000 patient prescriptions each day. The company will deploy Stratis’ blockchain technology to improve patient safety across the online pharmacy sector as a whole, reducing instances of patients ordering multiple prescriptions.
By ensuring each patient’s request for a prescription is logged on a shared and immutable distributed ledger across a group of UK online pharmacies, the programme ensures patients can only access prescribed quantities of medication. Doctors dealing with online consultations and pharmacies preparing medication will have the ability to cross reference patients using a unique identifier assigned to each individual. Any previous request for medication across all online pharmacies in the programme will be easily referenceable using Stratis’ technology, ensuring patients receive correct prescriptions.
Joe Soiza, CEO at UK Meds commented:
Despite screening our own customers by IP addresses, phone numbers, cookies and many other factors, there isn’t a cross-industry solution to identify patients attempting to obtain multiple orders of drugs, with opioids being a particular example. Clearly our entire industry needs to come together to ensure we do everything possible to protect the vulnerable and utilizing Stratis’ technology can help us achieve that.
The Stratis Platform provides a highly secure blockchain solution that can be shared across the industry to provide a trusted and verifiable record of patient requests for medicine. We are initiating this programme, and we have over 10 online pharmacies onboard already. It’s our ambition for this to become the de facto standard across the entire UK industry.
Stratis’ technology will also be used to improve UK Meds’ own supply-chain by deploying Stratis’ Smart Contracts in C#, this is essentially code running on top of a blockchain enabling them to undertake specific tasks, at critical stages. In combination with track and trace logistics solutions, each shipment of medication will be logged on the blockchain when originally produced by the manufacturer, during points of distribution and again on arrival at UK Meds to certify pharmaceutical shipments are correctly packed, arrive in fine condition and remain securely sealed in the correct quantity.
Chris Trew, CEO at Stratis added:
This is a great example of blockchain being deployed where its unique qualities will make a real difference. Using traditional IT solutions to solve this issue would require a significant expense and would undoubtedly be administered by a third-party organization. With blockchain, the industry can cooperate on the critical issue of patient safety using a shared version of the truth.
