Stratis Protocol

Over the past year, there’s been widespread interest in cryptocurrencies and distributed ledger technology (also known as Blockchain), with a lot of people investing in various cryptocurrencies, and most investors getting huge returns in a short time. As appealing as this might seem, it is important to keep it in mind that while there are winners, there are also losers in the cryptocurrency space. In this article, we’ll be talking about Stratis, one of the fastest-rising cryptocurrencies on the coin market. It was created in 2016 by Chris Trew and it has gradually risen to the top ten list of cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. In fact, by 5th June 2017, it had reached a market capitalization of $1 billion.

Overview

Stratis is a robust and flexible Blockchain advancement platform with objectives of greatly helping businesses and financial solutions to develop, deploy and test newly-created applications. It serves as a blockchain-as-a-service (BAAS) system for corporations and organizations, and it’ll help them to apply blockchain technology for numerous use cases across various sectors very fast.

Stratis is trying to help make the blockchain use really easy for people, evidenced in the motto “We make blockchain easy for you”. The goal of Stratis is to become one-stop shop for everything blockchain.

From a technological point-of-view, it is basically a clone of Bitcoin’s core code. Though, it comes packed with a few improved features and is in fact written in C#, facilitating the implementation of the functional Stratis API’s and framework.

Stratis: A Private Blockchain

A secure blockchain usually has thousands of systems running on a single protocol, meaning there is a massive benefit of running a conventional network (which is more stable and highly secure) rather than starting from scratch. Yes, Bitcoin is still the most popular and most secure cryptocurrency platform, and – of course – applications can be developed on the Bitcoin platform.

However, not a lot of people would even consider doing that! Why? Well, it’s really simple: Bitcoin has a comparatively slow 10-minute transaction verification window – plus the fact that numerous malicious attacks have been performed on the network in the past – which means that transactions could take hours to process and verify.

On the Stratum platform, Stratis is the native cryptocurrency and therefore, it’s required in creating and running a public or private blockchain. There’s a huge advantage to developing apps using private blockchains compared to public blockchains (Bitcoin, for instance) and this is mainly because private blockchains can be modified to suit your project and perform how you’d like.

“We Make Blockchain Easy for You”

Also, it runs a platform similar to a test net. It is known as the Cloud Stratis platform. Basically, it allows developers to develop, test and run their applications on the platform. Also, it supports creation of blockchain nodes for Bitshares, Ethereum, and Bitcoin. As a result of this, users don’t need to single-handedly manage a client or the whole network and furthermore, blockchain implementations can be modified according to each user’s needs. These features allow users to access these networks via APIs or lite clients.

The Stratis Coin (STRAT) and Its ICO

Trew thought the platform should have a ‘Stratis Coin’ to reinforce all its features, so he created a new coin called STRAT. STRAT is the native cryptocurrency of the Stratis platform. STRAT is a cryptocurrency which is based on a PoS consensus process with very low inflation and limited emission.

The ICO was started in July 2016, to fund the development and also increase publicity of the Stratis platform, and it was able to raise exactly 915 BTC (around $675, 000 – as of December 2017) in the ICO. 98 million STRAT were distributed immediately after this.

STRAT rose from $7.71 per unit (as of June 2017) to its price of $15.78 on January 20, 2018, which is over 50% increase in only 6 months. That’s a really impressive number!

STRAT is issued at a rate of 1 token per block, and a block is mined every minute.

STRAT Maximum Supply

After the ICO was completed, 98 million STRAT were distributed to the market. This is the fixed/maximum supply that will ever be available on the platform.

This token distribution is broken down as follows:

ICO Investors (85.7 %) 84 Million STRAT Bounties and Marketing Campaigns 4 Million STRAT Advisors and Partners 2 Million STRAT Team 8 Million STRAT Total 98 Million STRAT

Stratis vs. Ethereum

Stratis is very much like Ethereum in concept, mainly because both cryptocurrencies support smart contracts. However, there’s a critical problem with Ethereum; smart contracts on Ethereum are written in Solidity (Ethereum’s native language). On the contrary, on Stratis, smart contracts are developed in C# language – the most-recognized language of the developer network. As a result of this, developers don’t need to learn a completely different language before they can write smart contracts. Writing smart contracts on Ethereum means a developer has to learn Solidity first.

Furthermore, unlike Ethereum where every single smart contract operates off the Ethereum blockchain, Stratis supports smart contracts and other blockchain technology on its sidechains.

We can’t deny the fact that both projects have done exceptionally well in the crypto market, and they’ve gotten their fair share of praise. Besides, companies like Microsoft support the two of them.

Market Cap of Stratis

Of the 98 million STRAT created at its inception, 98 million are in circulation. The current price of one unit (as of January 20, 2018) is $15.78. It crossed the market cap of $ 1.5 billion few weeks in late 2017, and it will keep soaring high.

Meet Team Stratis

Chris Trew – He’s the founder of the Stratis platform. He’s also the CEO of Stratis. He is a technologist, architect with more than 10 years of experience in enterprise IT. He’s also a consultant.

Pieterjan Vanhoof – He’s one of the Stratis blockchain developers, and has vast knowledge and a lot of experience working as a committed dot NET developer.

Jeremy Bokobza – As a software developer, he’s a Stratis blockchain developer with an in-depth and vast knowledge of dot NET technologies, C# and computer architecture. Also one of the Stratis blockchain developers.

Dan Gershony – He is a Stratis blockchain developer with more than 10 years of experience developing on MS stack, mainly in C# dot NET.

Nicolas Dorier – He is very much devoted to Bitcoin. Although him and Chris started out on Stratis together (because of its innovative idea), in about two years, he developed the Bitcoin core for Stratis in C# language – all by himself!

Should I Invest? Or Not…

Right now, this is the million-dollar question about the Stratis project.

The truth is this, there’s no definitive answer to that question, as the right answer is – of course – based on your goals and risk-taking ability.

Stratis is still very new on the market. However, Stratis is actually a great project which has a great team and as well, it does look promising. Everyone needs a safe space, since there are a lot of rival cryptocurrencies out there on the market, struggling to gain adoption into the cryptocurrency space. In fact, this is one of very few cryptocurrencies to be adopted and implemented really fast by just about every known cryptocurrency exchange.

Summary

Right now, Stratis is being regarded as the technology of the nearest future, and it has received strong backing by tech leaders such as Microsoft. Yes, Stratis might be fairly new in the cryptocurrency space but the truth is, it really seems promising.

For more “what is…” articles check out our beginners guide to Litecoin, Ripple, Cardano, Eos, and Dash.

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