What a year we had.

Looking back on the last few months we probably all agree on the feeling where did the time go. We all have been working non-stop to get Stratis where it is today. It has been a true adventure. We feel proud when we are looking back at the results. Some highlights of our activities in the past months include:

• A successful ICO with almost 1000 BTC raised from more than 500 participants.
• A well planned and executed $STRAT distribution to investors from ICO.
• Listing of $STRAT in major exchanges Bittrex and Poloniex.
• Extraordinary performance of $STRAT on exchanges reaching more than 5x original value to investors.
• Addition of Stratis to the Microsoft Azure BaaS Program.
• Support by Ledger Wallet to Stratis.
• Launch of Stratis Academy, with 1st Hackathon invite.
• Promotional activities on social media, TVE, and media partner channels.
• Brand refreshment: corporate identity and website.
• Secured Stratis trademark in the UK as well as fulfilled all requirements for incorporation and physical address for our business operations.

With the development of the Stratis Development Framework (SDF), SDF .NET Core Native Cross Platform Support we have some great development milestones to look back at in 2016. We initiated the integration of breakthrough developments such as nTumblebit and the Azure indexer, which will make Stratis one of the most innovative platforms in the space.
From the organizational point of view we worked on improving our organization by hiring for key positions as well as defining internal processes, roles and responsibilities. We have set in motion processes for timely and accurate communication and to address potential issues on a timely manner.
We have been consulting with top experts on exponential growth and business organization to adequate our vision and strategy to grow at an accelerated rate and make Stratis attractive for VC investments in the short term. We have put in motion an expansion plan to the Americas and India to position Stratis as a valuable investment opportunity for VCs.
We have established and developed channels to provide regular communications and updates via Stratis Weekly, social media, video interviews, Slack and media partners. We have run multiple successful marketing campaigns via TVE and distributed a multitude of bounties and incentives to promote different Stratis activities.
We are currently working on several community lead projects, such as video production, merchandise and commemorative coin, and we are continuously receiving great input and new ideas. Special thanks to those leading and actively participating on those projects.
We are privileged to have the support of an amazing community that keeps on improving and growing with us. We want to thank all of you for participating in all possible ways, you have truly amazed us. We wish you all a happy new year and hope that this weekly news will contribute to your holiday spirit. One for Stratis and Stratis for all.

Announcements

We are happy to announce the completion of the following steps towards the completion of the Stratis Roadmap:
Website
The next step in our brand refreshment is here. Earlier we showed you our brand new logo, and now the first version of our new website is ready, we all invite you to take a look at stratisplatform.com. Please, feel free to share with us your comments and suggestions to improve it.
Electrum Stratis Wallet
The new Electrum Stratis Wallet is a fact! You can download it here.
With the new wallet you don’t have to download the blockchain anymore to use it. It also has an HD (Hierarchical Deterministic) wallet feature. This means that by remembering 12 words you can get access to your wallet anywhere you want. It will generate your addresses and private keys from those 12 words. So needless to say those 12 words should be 12 words not to forget. The Electrum Stratis Wallet is fast, secure and easy to use. The wallet can be used on the desktop or with the command line interface. It also will support the Ledger Wallet feature after they have released their new firmware.
nStratis and Stratis Cloud
These projects are still being developed and soon to be publicly released on the testnet. We are happy to report that our Stratis full node is currently running over actual bitcoin nodes, which is a huge step on that direction. Additionally, we are giving the final touches to the UI for our Stratis Cloud. We will inform of additional progress, but we expect those to be concluded by the time we start making public presentations planned for 2017.

The Road Ahead (2017)

Our marketing efforts will kick off early in 2017. Only for the 1st Q 2017 we are already booked for participation in major blockchain events in three continents:

1. Blockchain Expo London Expo (London, UK)
2. The Blockchain Event (Fort Lauderdale, USA)
3. C# Corner Annual Conference (Ghaziabad, India)

This events also cement our expansion into markets in the Americas and India, through solid partnerships and regional presence. At the C# Corner event (the largest C# developers community in the world, 2+ mill members) we will have a keynote presentation and will organize a hackathon for developers to get hands on the Stratis development tools.
In 2017, we expect to develop strong bonds with C# / .net developers. We will be launching our Stratis Academy training program, as well as identifying MVPs and Ambassadors candidates all of which will help put Stratis in front of corporate decision makers through their IT departments. We will be also holding several hackathons and competitions, so stay tuned to the opportunities.
We will be making a major marketing push with advertising on the most popular blockchain related websites and publications properties, as well as on C# Corner and some of their affiliate publications for C#/.net developers.
We are working to implement the Unity/Stratis integration based in the latest achievements from Nicolas Dorier, an integration that would open the possibility of Stratis platform being used for in-game asset creation and development of in-game economies with Stratis at the center. We are actively seeking for developers and partners to assist with this major project, and have received multiple applications which we are in the process of reviewing.
Last but not least we are looking into our next steps for the future of Stratis, such as the Stratis Assets & Crowdfunding Platform and the Stratis Dapps Marketplace. All these initiatives guarantee we will stay competitive and secure our spot among the top cryptocurrency projects of all times. As you can see the future ahead of us is bright. Thanks for coming along with us in this journey!