London-based Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) provider Stratis is going after the ICO market in a big way — and they have software giant Microsoft on their side.
The Stratis ICO platform is now available on Microsoft Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing marketplace. This makes it the first platform of its kind to earn this distinction, and shows the deepening harmony between Stratis and the Microsoft ecosystem.
Although the blockchain as a service (BaaS) space is already crowded, the market is expected to grow from its current size of about US$623 million to more than US$15 billion by 2023. Stratis’ strategy is to go after the niche of developers familiar with the C# and the .NET framework. The .NET framework was originally developed by Microsoft.
Made-to-Order ICO Toolkit
The Stratis ICO platform is streamlining the fundraising process by allowing projects to issue tokens in matter of minutes and raise funds in USD, BTC, STRAT, or more than 50 other cryptocurrencies via Changelly.
It also aims to tackle the legal difficulties encountered by many ICOs that collect funds , knowingly or unknowingly, from jurisdictions where their token sale might be considered as trading in illegal securities. This is accomplished by filtering IP addresses from selected countries, and detecting and blocking those using VPNs or TOR.
In addition, there is integrated know-your-customer (KYC) support for verifying the identities of participants.
Speaking on Stratis’ inclusion on Azure, CEO Chris Trew remarked:
Utilizing the Stratis ICO Platform on Azure allows ICO Administrators to leverage the advantages of Azure’s PaaS offerings. Removing the headaches with typical standalone virtual machine deployments that are all too common. Our solution tied with Microsoft Azure allows an ICO Administrator to ensure their data is safe and their ICO is always available.
The headaches he is referring to are probably situations where a large number of investors swamp an ICO and are unable to get their funds in.
All this means that startups conducting ICOs on Stratis face lower barriers to entry, both technically and legally. At present the service is being offered for free, and can be found here.
Long-Term Strategy
From the beginning, Stratis has been designed to offer enterprise-oriented blockchain solutions. Integration into Azure is definitely progress in this direction, since Azure’s clients already include a number of major corporations such as Boeing, 3M, Samsung, and others.
The Stratis team gives the impression of being highly experienced both with software development and the overall dynamics of the software market.
Stratis has consistently kept a relatively low hype profile while delivering solid and consistent technical progress. It appears that with the help of Microsoft, Stratis is also actively staking its claim over a portion of the future blockchain market.
Putting more energy into marketing may have more short-term effects, but focusing on long-term strategy and leveraging partnerships may ultimately be more important to overall success.
