Team
The Stratis team will not give you the warm and fuzzy feeling. If you look at their website and track back the team to LinkedIn you will find half of the team doesn’t work at the company or that this is their first job out of University. I also couldn’t track down the CEO on LinkedIn at all. Another thing I noticed is that the team is spread out across the world, which while forward thinking can be tough for coordination.
Tech
The basic Stratis mantra is Blockchains made easy, allowing for the use of C#. They use proof of stake, rather than the traditional proof of work or mining used by Bitcoin and Ethereum. This means if you run their Breeze wallet and manage to save up 250,000 STRATs, you can run a node and reap all the rewards available therein.
Market
The platform market is starting to become crowded. Not only with the likes of Ethereum (the clear leader in the platform space), but now also with many others such as NEO and WAVEs. There are also several others that try to solve the scaling issues of Ethereum; these include SimpleToken and Raiden Network. In sum this is a hotly contested space. In my opinion NEO has the lead on Stratis and offers similar functionality, but with a few more advanced upgrades such as a Quantum resistant ledger. (Stratis is built on Bitcoin security which is susceptible to a Quantum computer attack). NEO also has a different form of PoS called dBFT (Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance) which basically means the blockchain cannot be forked.
Since Stratis is developing a platform, adoption by the market is key for its long term success. As of writing they have 2 ICOs coming down the pipe which may help things. NEO again has the lead here with several products in development and the successful launch of Red Pulse which is already a ~$150M market cap currency built on the platform.
Final Thoughts
Stratis seems like a great upgrade to Ethereum and Bitcoin. Proof of Stake solves for a lot of the scaling issues that the 1st generation blockchains experience. Unfortunately, the team definitely gives me pause; it isn’t a group of people I would typically see running a tech company. A few team members have also left the project which you can infer means they no longer believe in long term upside. While proof of stake is an improvement on proof of work, I think there are better applications of this in coins like NEO.
To do your own research have a look at How to evaluate Altcoins like a Venture Capitalist
It is not intended as and does not constitute investment advice or legal or tax advice or an offer to sell any securities to any person or a solicitation of any person of any offer to purchase any securities