Finally some news from the Stratis team: The Stratis ICO platform is going to launch on the Microsoft Azure platform on May 9th.
ICO PLATFORM
With the deployment of the Stratis ICO platform it will become possible to launch an ICO on the Stratis network. There have been two 'premiere' Stratis ICO's this year already, namely the Gluon ICO and Beyond Global Trade, but these were greenlit manually by the Stratis team. I assume these were a sort of test-cases for the actual platform launch.Through the ICO platform the greenlighting-procedure that the previous ICO's went through will disappear, and Stratis will actually function as an ICO platform from it's launch date on May 9th. Through the Microsoft Azure marketplace business will be able to create an ICO with only a few clicks in order to crowdfund any project.
(source)
STRATIS
What sets Stratis apart from it's competitors are three main things:
- Oriented at businesses, offering Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS)
- Not trying to dethrone Bitcoin, but rather work with Bitcoin
- Tumblebit privacy features
One might say that Stratis is a sort of 'Ethereum for Bitcoin', because the Stratis network is designed to work side by side with the Bitcoin network. In fact, a Stratis wallet is also a Bitcoin wallet (you can store both on it). Stratis Masternodes will offer Tumblebit functionality, which not only works for the local STRAT token but will effectively 'tumble' your Bitcoin as well, making them anonymous. Tumblebit Masternodes earn a fee in Bitcoin (!) for providing this service. Stratis has further implied that it will be possible to setup a Lightning Network payment channel to a Stratis Masternode, in order to bring privacy to the Bitcoin blockchain at lightning speeds.
(source)
Privacy is an important feature for the corporate sector as large corporations do not want all of their data publicly accessable (from prying eyes). The corporate sector is the prime focus of Stratis, and I believe they are aiming to service corporations who are looking for an all-in-one easy deployable and dependable infrastructure, which Stratis will try to deliver. Think: Accountancy firms, the financial sector, and so on. Basically the same market that companies such as Microsoft live off of.
Stratis further boasts a tx throughput of 20.000 transactions per second (according to an article) and is compatible with the popular programming languages C# and .NET. With side-chains, scaling is practically infinite. The STRAT token is a 'fuel token' and STRAT is required to deploy a private side-chain for businesses, which will decrease it's total supply over time as more tokens get locked up. Other than Masternodes (which require a hefty 250.000 STRAT to deploy) Stratis is fully Proof-of-Stake and offers staking rewards for regular PoS node operators as well.
I've always considered Stratis and NEO to be somewhat similar, where I've always looked at NEO for conquering the East, but expect Stratis to do well in the West. After all, Ethereum's public and 'wild west' ledger is exciting but offers too little of the features that large enterprises desire. It is far more likely they will choose a blockchain that better suits their needs, and Stratis aims to position itself to fill that (rather large) niche.
Sadly for my portfolio holding STRAT has been a disappointing journey for me. Perhaps the arrival of the ICO platform will change this: after all Ethereum went skyhigh because of it's ICO feature and it did not exactly disappoint on NEO either. Though in the latter case it took some months before it caught on - perhaps Stratis will need to prove itself in this regard as well.
On the other hand, this is one coin that hasn't boomed in a long time, even though last year it was a top 10 coin. It feels like it's overdue for some price-action.
