Our Thoughts on niTROn

The world’s first TRON conference offered a glimpse into the platform’s vision for blockchain technology

Last week, at the Yerbabuena Center in San Francisco, the TRON Foundation held its very first niTROn Summit — a two-day conference that brought together industry experts, developers, regulators, entrepreneurs, and crypto enthusiasts with the stated goal of sharing ideas around blockchain technology and its role in the future of entertainment and commerce.

The summit boasted some impressive names on its keynote speeches and panels — from TRON CEO Justin Sun and other crypto industry leaders, to finance and regulation experts, to basketball legend and star investor Kobe Bryant. niTROn was Tron’s biggest event to date, and it didn’t disappoint. Hundreds flocked to the summit to see Justin take the stage and learn more about TRON’s direction in 2019. While much of my time was spent at meetings, I noticed several trends that I believe would be of interest to the community.

Many developers were interested in TRON. Many of the attendees at the conference were developers. TRON’s growth over the next year will be contingent on getting blockchain and traditional developers to build solutions on top of it. At the summit, both Justin and other TRON Foundation leaders emphasized their commitment to support and listen to the developer community. And with the TRON Accelerator for DApps plus the TRON Arcade fund for games, I am confident they’re off to a good start.

Projects are coming to fruition. Before TRON’s virtual machine launch in August 2018, many people were excited about the idea of TRON, but there were few concrete projects in development. This has changed drastically in the last four months, due in no small part to TRON’s efforts to make its platform compatible with other networks. It is easier than ever for developers to migrate their original code, and now many community members are developing their own projects.

Super Representatives as community pillars. Many if not all of the TRON SRs are now developing or implementing concrete solutions that improve the utility of TRX. One of the solutions I was most impressed by was Troncard/GRID, Sesameseed’s new product that aims to bring cryptocurrency usage into the brick-and-mortar retail space. Unlike past payments systems built on Ethereum or BitCoin, using Troncard/GRID I was able to seamlessly complete purchases in real time with an easy-to-use interface.

The TRON community as stakeholders. One of the most impressive things I noticed at the conference was that many community members had become evangelists for projects they liked. Some examples include:

• TRON members from Florida that had bought servers to become BitTorrent seeders.
• TRON members from Seattle that were encouraging local merchants to support Troncard/GRID payment systems.
• TRONBet fans that were introducing the community to TRONBet groups independently of the TRONBet team.

Last but not least, games. The TRON community was overwhelmingly excited about gaming. Whether it was more traditional games that utilized TRON architecture, or social casino games that appealed to crypto-enthusiasts, everyone was talking about games. There also seemed to be a consensus that games have one of the highest chances to become the thing that pushes TRON to mass adoption — and Justin’s assertion that the network sees three to five new gaming application uploads every day seems to confirm it.

TRON still has a long way to go, but niTROn was definitely a positive step forward. As both Kobe and Justin emphasized on stage, it is the passion for what they are accomplishing that keeps them motivated every day. And while Kobe is a basketball legend and knows his way around a stage, Justin’s proved himself more than an equal niTROn.

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