This is the weekly “altcoin corner” article where we explore another project in the greater cryptocurrency ecosystem

When Stratis first showed snapshots of their Breeze Wallet for both STRAT & BTC that included a proposed privacy solution for BitCoin users as well as a smart contract platform for C# developers and Azure platform users, it quickly rocketed to around $1.4 Billion in market cap. That was this past spring and Stratis has struggled to return to that all time high because of heavy delays in deploying Breeze Wallet on time for early investors.

Stratis developers were overly optimistic in emulating their source code from the Qt StratisX wallet into C# as well as major delays caused by an encryption bug in their TumbleBit privacy repository that was discovered late in the development cycle.

A solid platform despite fading market interest

The market seems to have forgotten about the potential solutions Stratis can offer to developers and end users with the number of smart contract platforms that have matured in recent months.

So, is Stratis still a worthwhile investment to trade and hold?

Yes, Stratis developers were overly optimistic with their promised release dates and then had to delay deploying Breeze wallet onto the main net even longer because of the contentious Bitcoin Segwit2X hardfork that was scheduled for November. It is easy for lukewarm investors to lose interest in a project with so much going on in the cryptoverse these days.

Let’s take a look at what Stratis now offers, and promises to offer the market as it struggles to climb back into contention as a platform.

Breeze wallet is finally live on main net and its Tumblebit repository is now fully operational for private BitCoin transactions between wallets. Privacy features for STRAT itself have not been enabled yet, but will follow soon, giving Stratis holders the same level of privacy.

Adoption of Dash masternode tech for tumblebit nodes

Stratis has adapted Dash’s masternode source code to run its 8 250K Tumblebit nodes, while offering PoS returns for smaller holders starting at 1K STRAT. This gives smaller holders a chance not only to buy STRAT with the hopes of the coin value appreciating in value, but also generate a return income in STRAT.

Stratis smart contract platform, which is now live on their test net, will offer sidechains for ICOs wanting to develop applications for the Azure platform, Microsoft’s cloud platform. With Windows 10 likely to be the last major release for that OS, Microsoft is banking on their future success with Azure and Stratis is well positioned for this transition in operating systems.

There are quite a few smart contract platforms available now, but Stratis has found a sweet spot in the market no one has covered yet, and their Tumblebit privacy solution is sure to gain them more users as Breeze Wallet continues to roll out its features. They have a rather large Slack community and a solid development team that seems to have a good relationship with Bitcore and the market should eventually place them back solidly in the 15-20 altcoins by market cap.