Stratis is a powerful and flexible Blockchain Development Platform designed for the needs of the real world financial services businesses and other organisations that want to develop, test and deploy apps on the blockchain. Stratis significantly simplifies the development process for creating Blockchain applications and accelerates the lifecycle for Blockchain development projects. Stratis private chain allows businesses to deploy their own customise blockchain without the costs of running their own blockchain network infrastructure. The vision of the Stratis platform is to become a one-stop shop for all blockchain things, mostly becoming a blockchain-as-a-service (BAAS) platform. Technology-wise, it is a clone of Bitcoin’s core code, with a few enhanced features and written in C# language instead of C++. The team is based in the United Kingdom but has a decentralized structure with members spreading across the world. Several people on their management team are well-versed in enterprise software development using .NET and C# – a positive sign considering those are the project’s two primary languages. Chris Trew, the founder and CEO, has over 10 years of experience in enterprise IT and was a volunteer developer for the Blitz project. Stratis is competing against other BaaS projects in an increasingly saturated but gigantic space. Lisk may be the largest direct competitor in offering sidechains for businesses. However, Lisk is written in Javascript (not C#) and has sidechains that are more publicly available. The decreased privacy may be a turnoff to corporations looking to keep their code proprietary. The company held an ICO in June 2016 and manage to raised 915 Bitcoin.
The fast-growing demand for cryptocurrencies calls for a convenient way to administer them. Melon is one such platform that works through a blockchain protocol allowing easy and efficient maintenance of cryptocurrencies. Acting as a hedge fund, Melon presents a fully customizable administration of your digital assets. You can use it as an online vault that allows you to store and transact your funds through its web portal. Melon was developed to meet the need for a cost-efficient and technologically advanced hedge fund to manage digital assets. Reto Trinkler and Mona El Isa founded the company, Melonport AG in July 2016. The company created Melon as a digital asset management protocol. It is a first of its kind system that enables the users to store, administer, and invest in crypto assets through a decentralized network. Melon works through a fully decentralized infrastructure. All the information of the user, such as smart contracts, assets, and records are saved on a decentralized blockchain network. It not only offers reliability for the storage of information but also reduces the risk of custody. The protocol also offers a decentralized system of execution through the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Smart contracts are distributed across multiple Ethereum networks to provide better efficiency and security for the assets. With the Melon protocol, users can save both time and money for investing in a hedge fund. Additionally, there is no requirement of a third party approval from a lawyer or advisor. Melon’s ICO was launched in February 2017 and sold out within 10 minutes. Melonport is aiming to bridge the gap between the portfolio managers and the investors by removing the role of the third parties such as law firms. Melonport’s CEO, Mona El Isa comes from a strong financial background and is versed with the problems of the investment industry. There is still a lot of work to be done on the Melon project, even though things are looking quite positive already. An audit of the protocol has been completed already, and the project continues to advance. No further specifics have been provided on the website, although it remains to be seen what the future holds. Bringing more value to Melon Coin would be a good idea, yet it remains to be seen how that might be achieved.