Stratis Developer Update – June 2017

Hello Stratis Community!

The Developer Update for the month of June is a roundup of news, timelines and progress. Addressing the latest topics about Breeze, Tumblebit, Microsoft Azure and Team additions. We hope you find this information helpful and that it provides you with a transparent and clear insight of what to expect in the weeks to come. Enjoy!

Breeze Update

According to plan, the first public Alpha release of Breeze wallet with a final GUI design will see the light of day by the end of June. This is the world’s first Full block SPV Wallet for any cryptocurrency written in C#. It is important to note that, at a later date, the Breeze wallet will the be first C# wallet to support mining via POS – a big leap forward for our technology offerings.We have encountered unexpected delays in the implementation of Tumblebit that caused us to reshuffle our priorities and reprogram to deliver incremental milestones.  We will expand more on this in the Tumblebit Tech Update below, but we want to give you an idea, of what to expect from this point on for the Breeze release schedule:

1. Full block SPV  Wallet with BTC (and STRAT)  (around end of June)
2. Full node Wallet (1-2 weeks)
3. POS on Testnet (1-2 weeks)
4. Tumblebit on Breeze  + Masternode (min. 4 weeks)

Each stage requires that developers and business units are sufficiently satisfied with testing and audits of this bleeding edge technology, before moving on to the next stage

Breeze Server Masternode Update

Work has been proceeding rapidly on the Breeze Server (masternode). An initial version running on testnet is nearing completion and public release. The Breeze wallet will not include the Breeze Server (masternode) in the initial release scheduled by end of June, as further development and testing is required to guarantee integrity of your funds.  The initial release will contain the following items:
– The Breeze Masternode Tumblebit server (completed, leveraging the NTumbleBit project created by Nicolas Dorier).
– The Breeze Masternode secure node advertisement protocol (completed).

Masternode Advertisement Protocol

In order to facilitate a decentralised registry of active masternodes, Breeze servers will utilise the blockchain itself as an immutable public record. On startup, each masternode constructs and broadcasts a specially formatted registration transaction with all the parameters the Breeze wallet clients need to find and connect to them. Some of the example fields featured in advertisement transaction are:
Masternode IP and/or TOR addresses.
A signature proving ownership of the tumbler’s RSA private key.
Proof of liquidity (a signature from a Stratis address containing sufficient funds to run the tumbler). This transaction is only performed once, unless the masternode needs to change its details. The Breeze clients will automatically maintain an internal database of active tumblers, and will update this information when new advertisement transactions are performed.

Masternode testing

The Stratis team will make a testnet masternode available for the community to test the tumbling functionality in the Breeze wallet. More details on this will be made available through public channels in the near future.

Tumblebit Tech Update

The Stratis team is engaging with the authors of the Tumblebit protocol to provide increased security and more efficient tumbling. Ultimately this bleeding edge technology will provide a highly scalable payment channel solution applicable to both the Stratis and Bitcoin blockchainsIn the most recent project review with the Stratis team alongside our Tumblebit lead consultant, Nicolas Dorier. We came to the conclusion that some areas require further development and testing, before we can put it in the hands of users comfortably and safely.We are committed to only deliver tech that meets our strict quality and security standards. This means we will always release cutting edge, fit-and-finish technology. It also means extensive amounts of testing, polishing and optimizing to guarantee that funds are kept secure at all time and processes are properly audited.With this in mind, we have come to the conclusion that more development, debugging, and testing is required before we can confidently make this technology available to the wider public. A slight reschedule of our TB implementation in the Breeze wallet is thus in order. This has prompted a reshuffle in some of our priorities until we can get some of the key components sufficiently matured and tested. Other releases dependent on Tumblebit , such as Masternodes will also be rescheduled as a result.We understand that this is of great importance to the Stratis community. So we have taken measures to address and solve these recently discovered challenges with Tumblebit in the shortest timeframe possible:1. Increasing focus on development processes by implementing common methodologies (Agile, Scrum etc). From now on we expect fortnightly sprint cycles with a development update at the end of each sprint, until final Breeze release.
2. Increased Headcount (Assigning extra tasks and finalizing the appointment of a dedicated TB developer to expedite delivery)Soon we will be announcing calls for testers to help us with the debug process and evaluating the user experience.Stratis Cloud Update : Azure CertificationWe are happy to report that we have made important advancements in bringing the Stratis Platform Full Node to the Microsoft Azure Certification program. We are currently in the last stages of this process. When the process is concluded we expect to have our full node deployed on the Azure Marketplace. This will enable us to leverage support from the different Microsoft business groups and initiatives around blockchain development. It will also serve to provide the first functional Proof of Concept, showcasing our Stratis Full Node capabilities. Simplifying deployment for developers from around the world. We expect to have this finalized by the end of the current week.Stratis Academy UpdateWe have been actively working in designing a strategy to on board developers on the Stratis Platform. In the coming days we will publish a survey to help us identify C#/ .Net talents in our own community and beyond. This will be the start of an awareness campaign among developers, supported also by our ‘Stratis Champions’ program. More details will be shared shortly, but for now please spread the word that we are looking for the best C# talent out there, and make sure to complete the survey if you are a developer.New Hire:
We are pleased to announce that Benoît Philibert also known as Bep42  (designer of the the Breeze UI ) has joined the Stratis team on a permanent basis. Benoît will support our front end as UX/UI specialist for our apps, and dashboards . You can take a look at his portfolio here. https://dribbble.com/bpdesignAlso, as mentioned above, we are actively looking for C# and .Net developers, preferably with experience in blockchain tech. If you have those abilities please contact us. We are hiring!