Stratis - Red Flags Abound

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Stratis Coin – Red Flags Abound

Note- June 18th: If you're reading this for the first time, please note that while I have left this entire piece largely intact (with the exception of a few typo corrections) I've also issued an update elsewhere on the blog with a few additional thoughts and clarifications. You may want to check that out as well if you have yet to do so. Cheers - Izzy

In short, it is my opinion that Stratis is a scam, likely perpetrated by the founders and members of the organization. I wouldn’t be surprised if they own most of the coins and have been engaged in a true ‘pump and dump’ of trying to get the price up so they can sell their coins to unwitting investors.

In this report I go through a discussion of their white-paper, but if you want to skip that section, feel free to jump to the section called ‘Additional’. I only ask that before you do so, you read the short Introduction below.

Introduction

I’d like to be very clear about a few things, so please read this short section before continuing.

I don’t know the true intentions (whether initial, or current) of the founders and proponents of Stratis. It’s possible (albeit given what I’ve seen unlikely) that there is more legitimacy to both the coin and it’s endeavours than that which I’m seeing. Furthermore, while I consider myself technically savvy and have done a fair bit of programming and design work, I do not consider myself a blockchain developer or expert – just someone who tries to use common sense as well as both reductive and deductive logic. That being said, I have enough of a technical understanding to identify what appear to me to be hollow promises and misrepresentations via technical jargon.

While I personally have strong feelings towards people who in my mind look to defraud others, this article is not meant to be vindictive. I leave it to the reader to determine whether my arguments have merit, and leave it to Stratis supporters and management to respond to the points I will raise here. If additional information is brought to light that adequately addresses the issues I raise here, I would be genuinely happy to admit error, as it would also mean that people whom I suspect of behaving poorly in fact did not. Regardless, I have little interest in a debate or a tit-for-tat on this. With this report of issuing a warning to readers to be more cautious (as well as a few other recommendations in the concluding section) I am keen to move on to my analysis of others coins. In other words, best of luck, and ‘Izzy Out’.

If you think others may appreciate this report, feel free to re-tweet my post and/or share the link.

Finally, please don't confuse Stratis for Stellar Coin - their names look similar on some websites. (STRAT for Stratis and STR for Stellar). Stellar is NOT Stratis!

Stratis Coin – What is it?

Let’s go straight to the source to answer this question: The Stratis Whitepaper which they list on their site. Wikipedia defines a Whitepaper as:

“an authoritative report or guide that informs readers concisely about a complex issue and presents the issuing body's philosophy on the matter. It is meant to help readers understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision.”

Hopefully this should tell us all we want to know.

Feel free to download and flip along with me as I run through it.

They currently have their whitepaper available here: 

https://stratisplatform.com/files/Stratis_Whitepaper.pdf

At first glance, the table of contents looks exhaustive and impressive. I count ten different sections. Let’s tick through them together – believe it or not, it won’t take long.

Section 1 of 10: SUMMARY

I like to think that very often the sign of a good idea is that it can be simply communicated in summary terms. If the sponsors did a good job, we might have enough in here to satisfy our curiosity.

Unfortunately, this summary didn’t really tell me much. The first 2 paragraphs talk about what blockchain is. I already know this[1] and don’t personally need a re-hash of this, much less in two paragraphs. Let’s move on.

The third paragraph talks about using blockchain in cloud computing and how blockchain can work with business cloud computing for as yet undefined benefits – so far, it just sounds like they save on maintenance. Not a homerun, and a bit vague, but OK.

Final paragraph – I’m a little concerned that they speak about Stratis’ capabilites in the future tense – ie, it will enable organizations to ‘stuff’. Shouldn’t they be saying that Stratis enables companies to do stuff? Or does Stratis need more development before it can be useful? Maybe I’m arguing semantics though. Let’s keep going.

I’ve read and re-read the rest of the paragraph, but it still doesn’t really tell me what Stratis does beyond enabling organizations to provision their own private blockchains. Fair enough, but there are plenty of other coins that do that. For what purpose though?[2] Clearly there must be some functionality that having a private blockchain on Stratis provides? All it really says is that it removes unnecessary ‘overheads’ while providing a ‘solution’. But a solution to what problem? They call their APIs and web-clients ‘powerful’ but I’m in more of a ‘show me’, not just ‘tell me’, frame of mind.  Besides, APIs and web-based clients may sound initially impressive, but when you know what they are they lose their ability to impress just by reference. An API is just a programmatic interface (nothing revolutionary there unless there’s something really novel about theirs) and web-based clients basically just means you can access it over the Web. What can’t you access over the web these days? Nevertheless, maybe there is something revolutionary or game-changing yet to come – I’m ready for it!

Unfortunately, we’ve reached the end of the Summary, still with little clarity as to exactly what Stratis does or why it’s different from other blockchains (or why it’s valuable). Not an auspicious start. But maybe that’s ok… let’s continue – there seems to be a lot more in this Whitepaper after all.

SECTIONS 2 & 3 of 10: ON BLOCKCHAIN AND CLOUD COMPUTING

Again, I already know what Blockchain and cloud computing are – I don’t need a rehash of these topics as I am actually just interested in what Stratis does. I won’t penalize them for including this, as background information is important for those still learning, but aside from that I don’t see it as relevant to my quest of discovering what Stratis does that makes it special.

SECTION 4 of 10: ON THE STRATIS PLATFORM

This looks like we’re about to get into the ‘meat’ of it. Unfortunately, I’m yet again disappointed. Allow me to address each of the 3 paragraphs in the ‘Overview’ (I, ii, and iii). It’s a little bit wordy, but I assure you I speed things up after we get through this section.

i)                    They open by saying (yet again) that Stratis is powerful and flexible (they seem to like saying this). They speak about how it’s designed for real-world needs for ‘financial services businesses’, but again don’t give any real examples – not even vague ones.

They talk about how it can be developed in pure C# and can use Microsoft’s .NET framework. As most programmers will tell you, C# is just one of dozens (actually, hundreds) of programming languages. I’ve personally done some coding in C# and quite enjoyed it (at least relative to C++ which I found a bit cumbersome[3]). These days if I had to pick a language I would probably pick Python, but that’s beside the point. The point is, what language an application is in for most of our intents and purposes doesn’t matter all that much. Yes, there are benefits and disadvantages to coding in one language versus another, but generally speaking, all programming languages do the same thing – which is convert the logic of our ‘language’ into machine-code, which is a series of zeros and ones to flip and blip through logic circuits in a computer.[4]

Any good programmer worth his weight can probably learn an entirely new language in a matter of weeks if not days (at least enough to be functional in it). I’m not sure why they’re so intent on touting C# (which by the way, isn’t exactly ‘new’ as it’s been around for about 17 years now). The only reason I can think of is that to someone who doesn’t know any better, it might sound impressive. Remember this point because it seems to get repeated quite frequently.

As far as utilizing the Microsoft .NET framework – well, I won’t argue with the intent here as that’s generally a good thing, but hardly a game-changer. If an application is built to be compatible/compliant with .NET, that just means it may be a bit easier and smoother to roll out new functions on computers that run Microsoft operating systems. But it is hardly necessary for a successful application. Again, this sounds to me like someone trying to make something sound impressive that really isn’t. But then again, maybe they’ll give me some examples to sway me.

The rest of the paragraph more or less repeats what the summary told me – that Stratis makes things fast, easy and secure. They use words like ‘turnkey’ and ‘lifecycle’ and ‘network infrastructure’. Once again, there’s nothing wrong with those words, but I’m still waiting for some substance.

ii)                   In the second paragraph, they speak again about how they’re developing in C#. I won’t repeat myself but see above for how this is largely a non-issue. They talk again about ‘powerful new features’ but don’t tell me anything about what these might be. They speak again about how Stratis will enable (again, that future tense - as though it doesn’t currently do this?) deployment of sidechains (which again, is not unique to this coin).

iii)                 In the final paragraph they talk about how Stratis will be open source (again, future tense)  . In case you didn’t know, all the major blockchains are open source – Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Dogecoin, etc. The only thing remarkable about a coin would be if it wasn’t open source – in which case the crypto-community probably wouldn’t bother with it at all. Worth mentioning sure, but not a unique selling point. They then continue to speak about how they will maintain the NStratis Full Node. Now NODES are something you see a lot of in blockchain-land… suffice it to say though, that what they are saying here, with the exception of it sounding impressive to someone non-technical, isn’t really saying much.

I won’t go through paragraph by paragraph the next sub-sections : “Architecture and Development”, and “Architecture of the Stratis Bitcoin Full Node” but instead I’ll give you some highlights.

-          They repeatedly speak in the future tense – that things ‘will be’ built, and there ‘will be’ a Wallet, and development ‘will include’ etc. 

-          They mention other technologies which they appear to piggyback off of – which is fine in itself, but yet again, with the exception of sounding smart to a neophyte, isn’t saying much in terms of unique functionality.

-          They list ‘benefits’ which just keep repeating that the language (C#) and implementation is superior (with no functional indications of how or why)

-          They give an impressive looking chart of layers which again, doesn’t really say anything about what benefits it will have or why (and which to an experienced developer is more fluff than substance)

-          They continue to talk about Bitcoin, the maturing technology, and issues around consensus and other topics – basically what reads to me like name dropping. The only benefit they really give is near the end where they say that being in C# is better than C++ because C++ programmers are in short supply, and that in other languages like C# “it is harder to make coding mistakes” (I kid you not, that’s a quote).

-          They finish by proposing that the Stratis Node will be based on a particular framework. Who exactly are they proposing it to? Aren’t they meant to be developing it (or have finished developing it)?

Section 5: KEY FEATURES (aka, make or break time)

Unfortunately, the first ‘key feature’ they focus on of private chains doesn’t really tell me anything new. They spend some time talking about issues with Bitcoin, but that’s not only nothing new, but many of those features are either being worked on by massive development teams and/or are already corrected for with other better established coins/protocols.

We’ve also established that you can make private chains, but for what purpose? And why is this different than other private chain services? Why would you even want a private chain? If they’re trying to get me as a business owner to hire them and their services, it’d probably be a good idea to actually show me a benefit. A straightforward API is generally nice, but that just means I have a nice interface to use it for some purpose. I still don’t know what purpose I’d be using it for – but it’d be nice if maybe they showed me a screenshot of this powerful API GUI[5]? Sadly, there is no API pic, but on the plus side, there’s a nice graphic with 5 circles and some arrows on it.

They then speak about ‘Blockchain as a service’ or BaaS which is a nice sounding acronym. Many people may already be familiar with SaaS (software as a service). And here is where I question whether the author was beginning to lose focus (and maybe hoped the reader wouldn’t make it this far) as he/she doesn’t even attempt to ‘bring it back’ to Stratis. Instead they talk about the benefits of Bitcoin and Ethereum as though that’s somehow an argument for Stratis .

I think at this point you get the picture, so I’ll speed through the rest.

Decentralized app hosting – again, talking about what they will do on top of the Ethereum blockchain (When did Ethereum get into the picture? Well, it enables them to mention the buzzword of ‘smart-contracts’.)

Bitcoin, Ethereum, LISK node provisioning – to be honest, I’m getting a little spent going through this, so forgive me if I gloss over there a bit. But basically, this reads more like an attempt to name-drop other coins and platforms to presumably trigger recognition in the reader.

One-Click Deployment – sounds like they are saying you can push a button and it will automatically ‘do stuff’ for you. Sure, why not.

Fiat gateway integration – At this point, I wonder why they even bother with in-between words. Maybe they should just list words like ‘blockchain’, ‘best-of-both-worlds’, ‘jurisdiction’, ‘speed’, ‘transparency’, and ‘fiat’. There’s even a ‘case study’ for an apparently fictional company called ‘RemitCo’ which takes us elsewhere in the document. Unfortunately, when I click on the ‘read more’ link to this alleged company with trying to help migrant Middle Eastern workers, it takes me to a case-study for a ‘financial services business’ named TradeCorp. The case study itself reads of filler/gibberish, dropping terms and items that may look impressive but actually tell the reader very little (if he can even make sense of it… I mean honestly, are P2P Ports using a JSONs through API even worth mentioning? Or giving port numbers as examples? I consider myself only a decent amateur programmer, and even I know these are not legitimate selling points).

Three-tier Architecture – slightly descriptive (albeit still a bit repetitive from earlier), but in my opinion still not saying much.

If you’ve made it this fair, congratulations – stick with me, we’re almost through. There’s just 4 more sections, but we’ll breeze through these.

SECTION 6: STRATIS CONSULTANCY

They say how their headquarters will be in London. In case the reader doesn’t know what London is, they inform us that it’s a global financial centre and hub for fintech services. They then talk about how they are thought leaders and as such will (again, future tense) do things like ‘leverage expertise’ and ‘forge key partnerships’.[6]

Their actual blockchain consultancy gets one short paragraph saying how they will help businesses of all sizes to save money, increase efficiency, etc. etc. Again, no actual specific mentions of what or how – though they do reel it back in a little and admit that blockchain is not a ‘panacea’ that is helpful for all cases. Fair enough – but maybe share one instance where it (and Stratis) IS useful?

Active Development – again, they will contribute to community and work on ‘key projects’ in the ‘relevant space’. Apparently, doing this will ‘position Stratis as one of the top blockchain companies.’

Scalability – the first two bulky paragraphs talk exclusively about Bitcoin. The rest of it, well, they go on to explain how using private ledgers will help that, with the ‘remarkable versatility of an extensive 2.0 platform’ which again, means very little.

Their next paragraph on Proof-Of-Stake makes little sense. Their summary point that businesses who would want to use Stratis or some other coin might (were it not for Proof of Stake) somehow need expensive mining equipment is hogwash.

They finish by promising ‘a series of measures’ to ‘combat bloat’, which will keep it lightweight.

I don’t think there’s a need to go through the sections ‘Bitcoin Compatibility’ and ‘Conclusion’, as they’re basically more of the same: vague promises of things to come while offering little to nothing in the way of technical explanations (what a whitepaper is supposed to do!).

OK - Almost done!

SECTION 9: Case Studies

If there were some real-world application for Stratis, either actual or theoretical, this would be the place to shine. If they had A customer who had success, that would be worth touting after all.

Proof-of-Existence : they are talking about blockchain in general – nothing to do with Stratis.

Clearing & Settlement: Same, with the exception that they mention dollar amounts that might be saved by the industry as per a ‘reference report’. Still nothing to do with Stratis.

Creating a Private Blockchain – Not only does it read more like a vague fabricated and theoretical story (and not like a true case study) but as this is the link we were brought to before, aside from a fair bit of technical jargon dropped, no real-world business problem is actually addressed.

Fiat Gateway – Ah 0 here is their example of a noble company helping migrant middle-eastern workers. Apparently the link to the case-study was simply pointing at the wrong page. ‘RemitCo’ allegedly has engaged Stratis to perform cross-border payments and it is apparently working well!

Sorry, but I call shenanigans on these companies in the ‘Case Studies’. Yes, if they were real companies they might not want their identities to be shared – but considering the lack of credibility anywhere else in the document (never mind that I see no reason why a company wouldn’t want to be known as doing something smart and noble) the onus is on Stratis to demonstrate that these are real world instances and not make-believe accounts.

Blitz Sidechain – you know what? It seems like people already suspect shenanigans here.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1768875.msg17661545

ADDITIONAL

If the White-paper walkthrough either didn’t convince you that this is a scam (or if you fell asleep trying to get through it) then consider these additional points.

The Stratis Website

• Besides the ‘whitepaper’ (which I’ve hopefully already addressed as hot-air), there is next to nothing of substance about the viability or activity of Stratis. Instead what we have are things that point to a sales-pitch.
• A whole and main section devoted to selling the ‘Token’, with claims that it’s ‘valued by investors worldwide’. They attempt to use the fact that it is traded on ‘reputable exchanges’ as somehow proof by proxy that the coin itself is reputable. The exchanges make no such guarantees. It’s buyer beware.
• The token section points you to ‘CoinMarketCap’ which presumably tries to demonstrate credibility by showing it’s market capitalization. If you haven’t yet read my piece on ‘Pump and Dump’ which explains how phony valuations are created, you should consider doing so. Suffice it to say though that market cap by itself is not a sufficient base of credibility. For an amazing real case study in fraud, check out ‘Cynk’ – you can start reading about it here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/cynk-technology-stock_n_5573862
• Instead of actually trying to demonstrate a use for the token, they literally have a section called ‘Why is it valuable?’ where a smirking photograph of the ‘CEO’ tells you that ‘the sky is the limit’. He continues to tell you that what motivates him most is the ‘value to society’.
• ‘Stratis Academy’ – in what looks like a transparent attempt to gain credibility, they promise a dedicated ‘Academy’ to be launched in Q2 2017 (note: Q2 ends in approximately 2 weeks.. any announcements yet?). I see no resources listed from the ‘Academy’ except the whitepaper (which we’ve addressed), something which claims in its title to be on programing in C#  (but in actuality is a picture of balloons and empty headlines and diagrams), and a whitepaper on blockchains in general (in India! And nothing to do with Stratis).
• Their ‘Use Cases’ section is several versions of the same 2 page template. There are those balloons again as well as the same graphic of circles and arrows, which just minor word changes on each.
• The ‘Team’ – I won’t go through this section in detail as I’m not personally interested in making this about individuals. Suffice it to say though that when I did a bit of googling on the background of several of the members, I found similarly shady websites and references with vague claims and promises.
  
  To be fair, there may be members of the team that are just doing their job focusing on a particular task at hand. That being said, outside of being paid in Stratis tokens (or the promise of them) I’m not sure what their financial interest could be in the organization – which speaks to the possibility of at least some level of awareness that something shady is/was going on.
• Business Development/Corporate Headquarters

Considering that they make no reasonable case anywhere on their website to garner actual business clients (as opposed to just trying to get people to buy their coins), you’d think they must have a very pro-active commercial marketing and development team: actively pitching companies on the benefits of Stratis Consulting and Implementation.

Instead, they have a web form.

Well maybe they’re all pounding the phones at Corporate HQ?

Well, it’s actually a bit difficult to find out where this hub of activity is located, but thankfully, it is at the bottom of their team page.

Let’s have a look on google-maps to see Corporate HQ @ 20-22 Wenlock Road (London… which in case you didn’t know is a financial hub).

What’s this ‘Made Simple’?

Well, google has an answer: ‘Virtual Office: Made Simple”!

https://www.londonpresence.com/about-us/

Note the address 20-22 Wenlock Road.

The downside is that there doesn’t appear to be much activity vis-à-vis a commercial salesforce organizing the launch of the next corporate Stratis customer. The upside is that if you need someone to answer your phones, forward your mail, and provide you with an office address to print on your business cards, they offer packages for as little as 15 pounds a month.

Summary and Recommendations

Unfortunately, if you have invested in Stratis coins, it’s my opinion that you have made a mistake. It happens. Try not to beat yourself up over it. Even really smart and experienced people get conned. I don’t know if there will be any recourse to ‘get your money back’, but it’s doubtful that you’ll get anywhere with the exchanges where you bought the coins. They were and are likely under no obligation to support any particular coin.

That being said, if you believe this report has merit and agree with my conclusions then you would be within your rights to request that those sites halt trading in Stratis coins to prevent others from getting ripped off.

Also please note that I have not shorted Stratis coins, with the plan to make money on issuing this report.[7] I’ve done this as a PSA (public service announcement) along with a little bit of ‘karmic motivation’ if you will – as I know firsthand what it feels like to get conned in markets.

If you appreciated this report, please feel free to let me know and/or follow me on Twitter. I am working on another report (far more constructive!) for a coin I really like. I’ll post it and announce it on Twitter when it’s completed.

Izzy

Follow @cryptoizzy

P.S. I’ve had several people ask me for trading/investment advice. I am wary about giving this to anyone, but in general do my best to answer honestly with what I see about the current landscape (while at the same time, not opining on work that is in process). To the extent that you have more elaborate questions/situations, please be patient as it does take time to formulate thoughtful responses. I do have many non-crypto responsibilities, so outside of acting as a consulting service (which I’m not sure I want to do), I need to prioritize my time and resources.

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[1] If you haven’t read the whitepaper on Bitcoin by Satoshi Nakomoto, I highly recommend it. In my opinion it’s an inspired work of genius. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

[2] Other coins I’ve researched that allow for this do offer a good explanation for their private blockchains uses – but alas, no such clarity is to be found here.

[3] Things called References and Pointers in C++ can be quite a nuisance to grasp for new programmers, but are generally pretty valuable in terms of understanding how the computer memory actually works. This is no doubt one of the reasons that C++ continues to be taught in Computer Science introductory courses to this day.

[4] There are definitely instances where the computer language is critical, but this is usually reserved for either advanced computational functionality or services where nanoseconds (billionths of a second) matter – ie, High Frequency Trading or HFT. However, If there is a need or use for this in Blockchain, I have yet to see it – never mind the fact that I don’t believe C# is the ‘go to’ in these situations anyway!

[5] GUI, pronounced ‘Gooey’ is short for Graphical User Interface. It’s basically just the how the programmatic interface ‘looks’. It can range from a simply menu of options, to a novel dashboard layout.

[6] Prestige Worldwide anyone?

[7] As far as I know, there isn’t even the ability to do so on the exchanges where it trades, so you needn’t take my word for it.