As reported yesterday, today marks the official release of the Masternode alpha of Stratis. Masternodes have gone live on the testnet and according to the developers on Slack is very close to completion: implementation on the Live Bitcoin network will follow soon!
Additionally, although I was not sure wether the Tumblebit privacy feature would be implemented in the alpha, today's announcement makes it clear that YES, the Breeze Privacy Protocol is indeed in the alpha as well. A new Stratis Breeze wallet with Breeze Privacy Protocol features has been released as well to go with this Masternode Alpha. That means that users of the Breeze wallet are able to anonymously mix their Bitcoin by the Masternode, to obfuscate who the sender is (or indeed anonymize your own Bitcoin stack with a single mouse-click). Operators of the Masternode can, in return, collect fees for mixing the transactions, which are in fact paid out in Bitcoin directly.
The full release features include:
- A live running Masternode running on Microsoft Azure.
- The Masternodes fully support our new Service Discovery Protocol and are currently configured to run our Breeze Privacy Protocol service.
- A new version of the Breeze Wallet with Breeze Privacy Protocol (powered by TumbleBit) that features the Masternode Client Discovery Protocol.
- The Masternode technology implements a collateral verification feature that requires the node operator provide 250,000 Strat to be held in a watched address on the blockchain. This requirement helps to incentivize the supply of appropriate resources required to operate the network.
The discovery protocol is an interesting one. It seems like it is a way for 'customers' (=wallet owners) to discover new providers of services (=masternodes) on the Stratis network in a way that is resistant to manipulation or censorship. If I am understanding this correctly, it is a more peer-to-peer way of doing business, which means nobody can stop you from accessing it as long as you can run the wallet.
All hope seemed to have drained from Stratis over the past months, but with these major milestones interest has been re-ignited in the project, and the features speak for themselves. I'm holding on to my STRAT until $50+ at the very least.
Read the full announcement of the Masternode alpha + download links here
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