It has been over five years since Stratis broke onto the scene, making waves within the blockchain space with the innovative development of blockchain solutions and a unique blockchain platform. Stratis’ platform, uniquely tailored to Microsoft technologies, remains one-of-a-kind and the only solution for .NET developers who aspire to build blockchain solutions in a programming language they’re familiar with and can trust.
The past 12-18 months have seen a significant uptake in blockchain technology exposure, accredited to innovations within Decentralized Finance offerings and a realization of Non-Fungible Token applicability; these key developments created a recent surge in utilization and an understanding of the real benefits of blockchain technology.
Stratis strives to remain innovative and push the boundaries for further development of its platform and product solutions. The following highlights Stratis’ development’s primary focus: ensuring its platform caters for expected growth and remains relevant by providing industry-firsts.

Project Graphene 

The launch of Project Graphene focuses on the enhancements to the Stratis Full Node, the core of all Stratis Blockchain Technologies. Project Graphene will concentrate on the following areas:

Applicability

Stratis has achieved its goal of providing a platform for blockchain solutions to be developed upon, utilizing common Microsoft languages on the .NET Core Framework. This achievement has secured Stratis’ position as the go-to blockchain solution for blockchain development in C#. As part of Project Graphene, there will be a focus on providing SDK’s for alternate programming languages, reducing the barrier for entry for developers more proficient with other programming languages. The further development of the existing Python SDK (pyStratis) and JavaScript SDK (bitcore-strax) will be an initial focus.

Scale & Security

The ability to scale is always something that remains at the forefront of Stratis’ development decisions. An initial decision to segregate Smart Contract execution from the mainchain has enabled Stratis to provide an environment that can scale with security assurances provided through the mainchain.
Project Graphene will focus on enhancements to Stratis’ existing employed consensus algorithms, Proof-of-Stake and Proof-of-Authority. To ensure the possibility of infinite scale, catering for the vast growth that has been witnessed on Stratis’ Smart Contract sidechain, Stratis is focusing on breaking out of fixed mining timeslots, ensuring that IDGB Members can produce blocks competitively, opposed to within given timeslots. This development makes it possible for a further reduction in block time while overcoming the challenges regarding on-chain time consensus and ultimately increasing throughput as the network scales. Stratis’ sidechain solution(s), secured by the InterFlux Decentralized Governance Board, offers a genuine level of decentralization, unlike other platforms within the blockchain space.
The successful implementation of Stratis System Contracts will be utilized to bring vital improvements to both User-Experience and security of both the mainchain and respective sidechains. There will be a focus on integrating the following System Contracts.

Federation Staking

The Stratis mainchain is already secured by a significant percentage of the total supply, upwards of 40%. However, through the introduction of Federation Staking, tokens that reside in the InterFlux MultiSig will also be staked with staked rewards trustlessly distributed to participating InterFlux MultiSig members, further increasing to total stake. System Contracts will also be utilized to manage the MultiSig, making it possible for the MultiSig to become dynamic and scale to more significant numbers, further increasing the security of InterFlux funds.

Collateral Staking Enforcement

In addition to the staking of the InterFlux MultiSig funds, Stratis is exploring additional participation requirements for the InterFlux Decentralized Governance Board. Further conditions will mean that IDGB Members will also have to stake their collateral on the mainchain for their blocks to be validated on the InterFlux chains they secure. Stratis will only look to enforce such additional conditions with the introduction of collateral delegation, meaning that staked funds can reside within cold storage.

Project Titanium

Stratis keeps a keen eye on developments within the blockchain space, particularly regarding the innovation and design decisions being made with the prominent platforms within the industry. As an example, this led to the successful implementation of Segregated Witness on the Stratis Mainchain and influenced various internal design decisions. Among the high-profile developments within the blockchain space as a whole is Ethereum 2.0. Stratis successfully achieved interoperability with the Ethereum blockchain some months ago through its InterFlux hub; however, Project Titanium is taking a radical approach.
Stratis is excited to announce that the scope of Project Titanium will be to create an additional sidechain, known as Web Assembly Sidechain (WAS), based upon Ethereum 2.0, utilizing the eWASM. This radical development will bring unrivalled performance, using a standardized instruction set architecture, enabling more programming languages out of the box, such as C, C++, Rust, and GO. The initiative to embed Web Assembly support within Stratis Blockchain Technologies has been a hot topic within internal conversations for some time.
A strategic decision was made to combine Stratis’ enterprise-focused development platform with the research and development that have gone into creating the specification of Ethereum 2.0. More importantly, the WAS chain will offer direct support for all contracts deployed on the Ethereum 2.0 blockchain, enabling immediate migration possibilities and presenting such migrations as a viable solution. In addition to contract support, applications built to support Ethereum, such as MetaMask and many others, will be supported natively. Ethereum 2.0 progress will be closely followed, with an internal testing deployment of a WAS based on Ethereums Goerli Network already in the pipeline.
Stratis intends to continue to utilize the existing block validation mechanisms and ensure that IDGB continues to secure all chains attached to the Stratis Mainchain. By taking this approach, Stratis provides a genuinely decentralized alternative to Ethereum and other platforms that have created chains based on Ethereum, such as the Binance Smart Chain. Existing IDGB members will provide block validation and creation with all chains under the InterFlux branding, resulting in a single pool of Masternodes securing all chains. Such an approach provides high levels of decentralization and mitigates risks and scrutiny associated with highly centralized chains and solutions.

Project Rhodium

Blockchain technology can transform traditional processes through its capability of providing trustless relationships between participating entities. The benefits of such trustless-ness are evident in both user experience and significant reductions in cost for those leveraging the technology. Stratis’ Rhodium project focuses on the further development of turn-key solutions that Stratis provides. Several solutions fall into the scope of Rhodium; specific updates can be seen below:

Onboarding and Compliance Solution

By pairing Stratis’ Identity Solution with its Smart Contract solution(s), Stratis can demonstrate and provide the benefits of blockchain within specific industries. Stratis’ compliance solution will focus on tying people and/or physical items to digital identity that can be referenced on-chain through Smart Contract interaction.
Stratis’ demo application will focus on the staff onboarding and respective employment checks necessary within large organizations. Within large organizations, the methodology of making staff compliant to work to framework standard is flawed for many reasons.
Through Stratis Blockchain Technologies and Artificial Intelligence governance services, Stratis’ solution can place the control of performing compliance checks in the employer’s hands, removing duplication of effort and achieving substantial financial savings. The existing process is reliant upon manual reviews taking place, ensuring compliance status and validity. Such methods can be replaced and become autonomous by utilizing Smart Contracts employed in Stratis’ Onboarding and Compliance solution.

Non-Fungible Token Marketplace

Stratis has seen growth in NFT utilization within many industries, but specifically within the art industry. Beeple | The First 5000 Days is an NFT that sold for over $69M in March 2021, highlighting that NFTs are to be taken seriously and also that there is a need for a decentralized marketplace where NFTs can be exchanged in a trustless and decentralized manner.
Several platforms already offer an NFT Marketplace; however, Stratis’ vision is to provide a platform in a non-profit manner, removing any fee incorporation and maximizing profit realization for the sellers and buyers utilizing the platform. Marketplace functionality such as NFT sales and bidding will all be handled autonomously via Stratis Smart Contracts, enabling content creators to embed receipt of future sale revenue and ensuring buyers that purchases made are fair and non-bias.

Unity Gaming Development Tooling

The recent delivery of Stratis’ Unity SDK received huge praise through its community channels, attracting new Unity Developers to its Discord server who complimented the solution. It has been highlighted that the SDK delivered by Stratis outshone competitor solutions; this was without native Smart Contract support.
Stratis is also focusing on non-gaming use-cases where the Unity Gaming Engine is utilized; industries such as film and computer-aided design (CAD) are of particular focus. To provide some context, the recently released remake of The Lion King utilized the Unity Gaming Engine to create background scenes.
Development has already begun extending the Unity SDK functionality with a dedicated team focused on developing games that either utilize NFTs to represent in-game assets or incorporate a token as in-game currency and/or reward.

Stratis is set to continue innovating and delivering practical and valuable blockchain technologies. Several events are already scheduled, including a Hackathon featuring industry-specific prizes and exciting sponsors. As always, the development items are subject to change as Stratis aligns itself with the expected market direction. The Stratis Decentralized Accelerator is already taking off, with a new proposal occurring on a near-weekly basis; it’s fantastic to see Strati’s hard work being leveraged and appreciated by newcomers to the platform.