The Stratos storage network is not only a storage, but also an acceleration network, so it can also be regarded as a “decentralized CDN.”
Written by: Groot
Although Bitcoin has been born for more than ten years, in the past year, the “Pandora’s Box” where the application of blockchain technology has been applied has really been opened. The popularity of digital assets and the charm of DeFi Lego have brought people’s interest in cryptocurrencies to an unprecedented height.
Entering 2021, DeFi and NFT have become the fastest growing track in the cryptocurrency market. However, providing a cross-platform secure data infrastructure is still a challenge for many developers and users. In this regard, Stratos proposed a decentralized data grid solution, and based on this, created a new blockchain ecosystem data infrastructure.
Data issues in the blockchain industry
At first glance, blockchain looks like the perfect solution for storing data. However, the original idea of blockchain technology only had one type of data: the record of financial transactions.
The traditional blockchain is actually not suitable for storing other types of data, especially the interconnection between different data types. Because of this, many people don’t think that blockchain can “match” the requirements of decentralized databases for complex use cases.
Extensive problems in current centralized data infrastructure
A decentralized database solution that is very suitable for the DeFi era must solve the three main problems that plague the decentralized storage ecosystem, namely, whether it can carry complex data forms, whether the operation is efficient, and whether the storage cost is too high.
At present, the existing blockchain-based decentralized clouds on the market are not suitable for supporting different types of data. Trying to merge a large number of data types together will cause new problems, and the data structure defined by smart contracts is very limited. .
Blockchain was invented to record financial transactions and results. At this time, it becomes very difficult to retrieve data with various conditions. Even if a smart contract is used to define a more flexible data structure, once it is created, retrieval is limited, and it is impossible to update the model and scale. In addition, the writing performance is not satisfactory. Any data written into the blockchain requires a consensus process, which will cause a stutter from one second to one minute.
In addition, since the content of each blockchain node is the same, any data written to the blockchain will be synchronized to thousands of nodes, resulting in high storage costs for the blockchain.
Stratos: data infrastructure in the era of decentralization
Stratos is a new type of data infrastructure designed to provide a trustless solution for decentralized storage, which frees blockchain developers from monopolistic centralized cloud services. Stratos’ decentralized data network realizes a scalable, reliable, and self-balancing next-generation data storage, regardless of the size of the data, making it simple, efficient and flexible to retrieve data from the blockchain.
Stratos makes decentralized data management easier for every user. From the developers and users of innovative NFT, DeFi and DApp projects, to communities based on decentralized governance and traditional enterprises that require CDN services, to providers of smart home solutions using edge computing–everyone can Benefit from an efficient decentralized cloud that does not require large-scale storage and content acceleration.
Stratos is designed as a virtual grid of structured and unstructured data, which makes it more flexible and cost-effective than typical decentralized databases.
Since we are moving towards Web 3.0, an open, trustless and permissionless network. Stratos strives to build a basic service to support the application of blockchain in Web 3.0, which helps to create a more intelligent and open website.
Stratos can provide the blockchain industry with a trinity of decentralized storage, decentralized database and decentralized computing services, combined with Stratos’ own blockchain, allowing developers to flexibly use different services according to their needs Combine to build your own application. The combination of various applications will cover almost all tracks in the blockchain industry, thereby enriching the Web3.0 ecosystem. The vision of the Stratos project is to free all applications in the blockchain industry from reliance on centralized systems, so that all applications in the blockchain industry can completely run on Stratos’s decentralized underlying architecture.
The main features of Stratos include support for all types and scales of data, high-speed upload and retrieval of data, scalable and adaptive database; permanent and highly available storage, etc., and it is a fully integrated platform driven by the community. Both blockchain smart contracts and calculations support specific domain languages.
On May 10, Stratos announced that it had completed a seed round and a strategic round of financing of $1.83 million. Investment institutions include Fundamental Labs, Kenetic Capital, Fenbushi Capital, Particle XYZ, Spark Digital Capital, Bixin Ventures, SNZ Holding, DFG Capital, and Nothing Research . Stratos will use the funds to continue to develop a decentralized data grid and develop the Stratos ecosystem.
What applications does Stratos start with?
NFT market
Stratos strengthens the NFT ecosystem by providing stable, efficient, and private data grid services for NFT projects. Store your encrypted artwork in Stratos’ distributed data network and add an extra layer of security to your NFT by protecting its metadata. The Stratos NFT market allows for efficient and credible data exchange and the transfer of ownership of digital products, but also allows owners to retain ownership and transfer the right to use to customers.
Stratos NFT Marketplace not only allows efficient and credible data exchange and the transfer of ownership of digital products, but also allows owners to retain ownership and transfer the right to use to customers.
Oracle service provided by Stratos Network
Stratos’ decentralized data storage and distributed data grid provide a solid foundation for creating a decentralized oracle service. Stratos guarantees that the source, transmission and storage of data are efficient and safe.
Aggregation API for blockchain data
The data stored and processed in the Stratos virtual data network can be reliably guaranteed and effectively retrieved. The decentralized data API provides users with an easy-to-use interface that can smoothly retrieve data through the data API service and easily perform predefined data processing tasks.
Stratos team
Bin Zhu, the founder of Stratos, has more than 20 years of experience in software development across multiple platforms and technologies. Previously, he founded MindGeek’s cloud team, established a complete big data ecosystem, and led the entire team to provide data services to more than 100 million users around the world every day. He was also the technical co-founder of Faimdata in Canada, an AI company that provides retail customers with intelligent solutions for consumer data through computer vision.
The Stratos team is composed of a group of top developers. The team comes from Canadian National Railways, Amazon, Expedia, Huawei and Alibaba. Each of them has top-notch enterprise-level development experience. In addition, about one-third of the team members are from Mindgeek and have mature big data platform development experience.
Development roadmap
Stratos Resource Network’s token economy white paper will be officially released, which will introduce in detail how the traffic proof consensus will promote the development of the Stratos ecosystem.
The Stratos value network Testnet will be released in mid-June, and an explorer for browsing value network blocks and transactions will be released, followed by the release of the Testnet wallet at the end of June. The resource network Testnet will be released in July.
In the third quarter of 2021, Stratos plans to release some demo applications and open them for testing on the storage infrastructure. The Stratos NFT market will be built on the value network test network and the resource network test network, and will provide a real case of the blockchain industry benefiting from the Stratos data grid by making full use of the value network and resource network.
Compared with other projects such as Filecoin, which is currently the hottest storage track, what are the advantages of Stratos?
Stratos is a Tier 0 infrastructure project, which includes blockchain, decentralized storage, decentralized database and decentralized computing. Filecoin is an IPFS-based project that provides users with file storage services, but there are several key issues that need to be resolved. One is the BitTorrent file transfer protocol. The file can only be transferred when someone needs it, and the miner can delete the file at any time. .
The PoS model does not help the network develop in accordance with a healthy model, but encourages miners to focus only on storage, rather than balancing storage, computing and the network. Like all major Internet companies, Stratos uses a traffic proof incentive model. Traffic is the source of value, but storage is not.
In addition, Stratos data storage and query will be more efficient. Stratos has a global and decentralized indexing service, and provides more appropriate sharding and replication to ensure that user data will never be lost. If the user data on some nodes is offline, Stratos will transmit the data to different regional nodes at any time to ensure that the number of copies is greater than 3.
Simply put, the Stratos storage network is not only a storage, but also an acceleration network, so it can also be regarded as a “decentralized CDN.”
summary
As stated by Bin Zhu, the founder of Stratos, he firmly believes that the scalability and high availability of the system infrastructure fundamentally determine how strong an application system can be and how far it can go. The Stratos team will strive to incorporate strong capabilities and years of experience in the design and development of top-level enterprise-level infrastructure into the decentralized storage, database and computing services of the blockchain industry. Provide a solid foundation for the continuous development of the entire blockchain industry. Stratos hopes to make it easier for everyone to access massive amounts of distributed data, thereby building a “next generation” decentralized data grid that provides scalable, reliable, and self-balanced storage, database, and computing networks.
