What is TRON?
TRON is an open source blockchain protocol designed to deploy a decentralized ecosystem with simplified mechanisms for creating and hosting applications and entertainment content on the network that users can share without intermediaries. Let’s find out more about its history and how it works!
The placement or sale of content on the network is supposed to be rewarded in the native cryptocurrency of the project — Tronix (TRX), and the platform itself is able to support blockchains and smart contracts of other projects.
Who is behind TRON?
TRON is led by Justin Sun, a young Chinese entrepreneur. Because his activity has a significant impact on the market and the price of TRX, he is frequently referred to as a marketing genius, and the project itself is criticized for centralization. Justin Sun, a history and economics graduate, entered the cryptocurrency space in 2012 by investing in bitcoin. He then worked as a Ripple representative in China, where he launched Peiwo (Chinese for “call me”), one of the most popular mobile voice streaming applications among Chinese youth.
He was the first millennial student at Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma’s university. He was named to Forbes’ 30 under 30 lists in Asia and China in 2015 and 2017. Then, in 2017, Sun established the non-profit TRON Foundation inSingapore, through which he raised 15,000 bitcoins for his project, accounting for 40% of the estimated 100 billion emission of TRX tokens. Simultaneously, 15% of the coins were distributed during the pre-sale, 35% went to the project reserve fund, and 10% went to the Peiwo fund. The TRON Foundation paid $140 million for BitTorrent in 2018; its uTorrent application accounts for about 3% of monthly Internet traffic. In addition, the company has decided to launch its own version of IPFS, BTFS.
Justin Sun frequently employs aggressive marketing, and his personality is fraught with controversy. Thus, after analyzing the TRON whitepaper, IPFS creator Juan Benet discovered that a significant portion of the document was copied from other projects, including his own, or contained basic information about the operation of peer-to-peer systems presented as something original. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin also accused Justin Sun of plagiarism. He also stated that if Ethereum is not bypassed by another emerging blockchain project, namely TRON, he will “lose hope for humanity.”.
How does TRON work?
The TRON architecture is divided into three levels: storage, core, and applications. The first, in addition to storing network blocks and statuses, allows for the use of a GRPC-neutral open-source framework for a remote procedure call in relation to the language and platform. Modules for consensus, smart contracts, and account management have been implemented at the core level. At the application level, this includes the ability to build decentralized applications not only in the main protocol language (Java), but also in others such as Scala, C++, Python, and Go, as well as support for the Protobuf structured data serialization protocol.
How is the project progressing?
The project roadmap for 2017–2025 includes six stages. In the first phase (Exodus), the main goal of the hypermedia peer-to-peer platform, TRON, was to provide a simple and decentralized file sharing process, which makes it related to IPFS. The project started on the basis of Ethereum, and in 2018 switched to its own blockchain, celebrating Independence Day by burning 1 billion TRX ($50 million). The second phase (Odyssey), which began with the launch of the mainnet, is dedicated to expanding the community of entertainment content creators. The third and fourth phases (Great Voyage and Apollo) will be associated with the launch of new tokens by projects participating in the network and holding personal ICOs. The fifth phase (Star Trek) will begin with the launch of a decentralized gaming and market prediction platform. The final phase (Eternity) will touch upon the issues of fundraising and monetization of projects on the platform.
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What is TRX, TRON Power and TRON20?
The project’s native cryptocurrency (TRX) is the main medium of exchange on the TRON network. TRON20 tokens are intended for developers: with their help, it will be possible to issue coins on the platform for their own applications. And for TRON Power (TP) tokens, which become available when TRX is blocked, users acquire the right to vote on the development of the network.
What is the difference between TRON and Ethereum?
Technologically, TRON is the main competitor of Ethereum and EOS. It is rapidly growing its user base and aggressively carving out a niche in the crypto market, poaching the developers of these projects in order to “save them from the collapse” of the platforms. Since TRON started on Ethereum and followed its development path, the virtual machine (TVM), smart contracts and TRON token standards are compatible with Ethereum, which makes it easy to migrate projects to this blockchain. Unlike Ethereum, where, according to Justin Sun, “miners are fighting developers,” TRON uses a consensus algorithm based on the delegated proof of stake (Delegated Proof of Stake, DPoS), that is, a separation of the functions of coin holders with the right to vote and transaction validators.
What is the difference between TRON and EOS?
Both projects use the DpoS algorithm, but EOS has a DpoS pipelined BFT (Pipelined Byzantine Fault Tolerance) version. As a result, the time to generate a new block and confirm the transaction on the network is shorter, but the total confirmation time is longer than that of TRON. However, project migration between blockchains is difficult. Justin Sun speaks directly to EOS app developers about this, advising them to choose which of the two platforms to link the future with from the start. Validators are in charge of validating transaction data and generating new blocks in the TRON network — 27 Super representatives elected by TRX holders. At the same time, unlike the EOS network, where block producers are elected without the possibility of buying votes, such a practice exists in the TRON system. Super representatives can use all the rewards they receive for adding a new block to the blockchain to buy votes, and moreover, to retain control of the network.
