Stratis Wallets & Exchanges

Stratis Wallets

Sending and receiving STRAT tokens has been made available on several wallet types, including software based or hardware based wallets. Some wallets provide functionality to earn passive PoS (proof-of-stake) rewards, while others provide a means to securely store your tokens on hardware USB devices such as the Ledger Nano S. Whether you want to stake your STRAT tokens, or simply keep your STRAT on a cryptographically secure wallet, there are many options that exist to cater to your needs.

1.0 Stratis Electrum (software wallet)

If you are looking for a wallet that is built on speed, convenience, and with the ability to work on a simple laptop or desktop computer, then Stratis Electrum may be a great option for you. The Stratis Electrum wallet is very lightweight and does not require the user to download the whole blockchain (which can be incredibly time-consuming). Instead, the user can send and receive tokens near instantly at blazing fast speeds.

The Stratis Electrum wallet is available on the main OS platforms including: Windows, Mac OSx, and Unix. This light wallet can be downloaded here depending on the operating system that you’re using. The wallet is accessed and can be recovered (if the wallet is lost) only with the use of a recovery seed. This seed consists of 12 words and MUST be saved in a safe/secure place in the case of the wallet being lost or corrupted. I

f you need to recover your wallet to retrieve your STRAT tokens, the only way you can do so is by restoring the wallet by inputting your 12 word seed in the same order that the screen dialog shows when making the wallet for the first time.

I personally recommend saving that 12 word phrase in a text document on an encrypted USB drive and making a paper copy of the phrase, that way there is a two-factor form of security. By remembering the 12 words in the correct order, you can access your STRAT wallet literally anywhere you’d like. Restoring a wallet from the 12 words will re-generate the public and private keys associated to that wallet generation seed.

The following steps will show how to generate a Stratis Electrum wallet for the first time.

Download the latest version of the Stratis Electrum wallet (at the time of this writing – version 2.7.17) for your desired operating system here.
Once you download and open the Electrum-Stratis application for the first time, it will prompt you to create a wallet. Click Standard Wallet and then click Next.
The window will now ask you to create a new seed or restore a wallet with an existing seed. If this is your first time making a Stratis wallet with Electrum, then click Create a new seed and then hit Next.
The screen will now show you your newly created seed which consists of 12 words in a specific order. *IMPORTANT* SAVE THESE 12 WORDS IN A SAFE PLACE IN THE CORRECT ORDER THAT THE SCREEN SHOWS. IF YOU LOSE YOUR WALLET AND FORGOT YOUR SEED, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO RECOVER YOUR FUNDS. Then click Next
The Electrum-Stratis application will now ask you to confirm your 12 word seed by inputting the 12 words in the correct order. Once you’ve entered the 12 words, click Next.
It will now ask you to enter a new password to encrypt your wallet keys. You have the option to disable encryption by not setting up a password (leaving the fields blank) but it is advised to set up a strong password for further security. Then click Next.
After setting up the password, the application starts to generate the wallet and a new window pops up that is the actual Electrum-Stratis wallet. You now have a newly created Stratis wallet on the blazing fast Electrum application! Congrats!

2.0 Stratis Staking Wallet (software wallet)

The Stratis team also developed one of the most innovative wallets that exists for the Stratis project. The Stratis staking wallet allows a user to “lock up” their STRAT tokens to stake them on the network. This wallet was developed and released to incorporate the PoS (proof-of-stake) algorithm within the cryptocurrency to achieve distributed consensus.

No matter if you have 100 STRAT, 10 STRAT, or even 1 STRAT, you can start staking today with just the minimum balance of having 1 STRAT in the Stratis staking wallet. Locking up these tokens allows the network to give out rewards for block creation when it is your turn to create a new block. This helps secure the network and is a part of the proof-of-stake process where nodes don’t require hashing power to create blocks, instead users can “stake” their tokens.

The Stratis staking wallet is very easy to setup to start staking right away and the steps to begin staking can be found here. Another good resource to follow with more images (for the visual learners) can be found here.

3.0 Ledger Nano S (hardware wallet)

You may not want a software wallet due to the potential of malicious attacks by hackers stealing your funds, and instead want to look for a solution that is hardware-based. This is where the Ledger Nano S shines. The Ledger Nano S is a hardware wallet that can handle and store Bitcoin, Ethereum, and several altcoins (including Stratis!). The USB wallet’s main features includes a secure storage for cryptographic tokens and to initiate cryptocurrency payments.

The Ledger Nano S wallet does not expose private keys to a potentially malicious party as this is part of the design. The transactions cannot be tampered with (in turn providing integrity). Also, the transactions can be verified on the embedded screen on the USB by pressing a button, which makes it essentially fool-proof and easy to use.

What makes the Ledger Nano S hardware wallet special is that your private keys are never held by the Ledger company or a third party. Instead, the private keys are locked in a secure hardware chip architecture known as Secure Element, which ultimately renders the wallet as decentralized. No more need to worry about a central authority holding your keys. Your are the only person that holds the keys to your cryptographic assets/tokens.

To learn more about the Ledger Nano S and how to set it up to store your STRAT tokens on this secure hardware device, please refer to this guide.

4.0 Breeze Wallet (Beta Mainnet software wallet coming soon…)

The Breeze Wallet is an upcoming software wallet that is aiming to integrate the TumbleBit technology to provide seamlessly private transactions across the network without the need for a centralized mixing service or another privacy-based cryptocurrency.

Privacy is becoming more of a demand in this day and age, especially on the blockchain. A big obstacle of mainstream adoption of blockchain technology is the privacy and integrity of financial data on the chain. When the privacy protocol is implemented successfully into the Stratis platform, businesses in the financial industry can be assured that records and data remain private.

The TumbleBit technology provides the following guarantees:

Transactions are private and unlinkable.
TumbleBit is fully compatible with the Bitcoin protocol.
It is impossible for anyone to steal your payments.

Another benefit of the Breeze Wallet is the seamlessly efficient and easy exchange from Stratis to Bitcoin, and vice-versa. The implementation of TumbleBit in the Breeze Wallet will allow for a trustless and cryptographically secure exchange between Bitcoin and Stratis. The development of the Breeze Wallet which supports enhanced privacy for Bitcoin transactions is expected to bring an influx of users of Bitcoin to the wallet. Doing so, this will allow Stratis to be more widely exposed to a whole new geographical set of users.

As of right now, the Breeze Wallet Alpha has already been released on the testnet and will segue onto the mainnet soon. According to the updated Stratis roadmap, the beta release of Breeze will be completed in Q4 2017. Since this wallet is not yet fully available to users on the main network, it is better to opt for the Electrum or Staking wallet (if you’re looking for a software application), or use the Ledger Nano S (if you’re looking for a secure hardware device to store Stratis tokens).

Where to Purchase Stratis Tokens?

If you are interested in purchasing Stratis tokens, there are many sites and exchanges available at your disposal. Figure 1 shows a table that contains a list of sites that offer Stratis tokens to buy/sell/trade.

Exchange	Link (URL)
Anycoin Direct	https://anycoindirect.eu/en/buy/stratis
Binance	https://www.binance.com/trade.html?symbol=STRAT_BTC
Bittrex	https://www.bittrex.com/Market/Index?MarketName=BTC-STRAT
Changelly	https://changelly.com/exchange/BTC/STRAT/1?ref_id=coinmarketcap
Coinigy	https://www.coinigy.com/
Cryptopia	https://www.cryptopia.co.nz/Exchange/?market=STRAT_BTC
HitBTC	https://hitbtc.com/STRAT-to-BTC
LiteBit.eu	https://www.litebit.eu/en/buy/stratis
Livecoin	https://www.livecoin.net/
Poloniex	https://poloniex.com/exchange#btc_strat

Figure 1: Table containing the list of sites offering options to buy/sell/exchange Stratis.

Conclusion

This article was written to cover the different wallets that are available to store Stratis – whether they are software-based or hardware-based. Depending on your needs, a software wallet might be better for you as it does not require you to purchase a hardware device like the Ledger Nano S.

The software wallets that are currently available for Stratis are the Electrum-Stratis wallet and the Stratis staking wallet. If you are looking for a lightweight and lightning fast wallet that does not require you to download the blockchain, you will definitely want to look into the Electrum-Stratis wallet.

On the other hand, if you want to be able to stake your Stratis tokens to earn some rewards by the network (for creating new blocks), then you are better off with the Stratis staking wallet. If neither of these options suit you, and you are looking to hold your Stratis tokens for a long time in a secure wallet, then you might be best off with purchasing the Ledger Nano S hardware wallet.

Buying and selling Stratis tokens is an easy process and there are many exchange websites that allow you to do this. Overall, the wide variety of options that are available to store these tokens and where to purchase them has allowed Stratis to become more widely known and appreciated. With the upcoming Breeze Wallet on the mainnet (coming in Q4 2017), Stratis will only progress forward as it will redefine secure private transactions from Bitcoin to Stratis and vice-versa.

I hope this article has given you a more clear understanding of what wallets are available for Stratis and how to get them setup, and where Stratis tokens can be purchased from.