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Transaction fees: Tron vs. Ethereum vs. POA

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The days in which Bitcoin was the world’s only blockchain are long gone. There are hundreds of digital assets right now, and each one is a different blockchain, even if some are not 100% independent than others (for instance, many coins are based on Ethereum’s ETH20 technology, some others on Tron’s TRC20).

So the panorama can be confusing because it takes quite a bit of technical knowledge to understand exactly how each blockchain differs from others (especially when it comes to the consensus protocols). But one question still lingers in every user’s mind: how much will my transactions cost? We’ll endeavor to explain to you exactly that in this article.

Transaction fees: Why do we need them?

A blockchain is comprised of lots of independent nodes working in tandem and reaching consensus according to each network’s protocol. Independence is critical here because it implies that there must be some kind of incentive for those who run and support a node. That incentive usually comes in the form of tokens which come, at least in some proportion, from user transaction fees.

So we need the fees because that’s how we support every blockchain’s infrastructure. And that’s not cheap if you realize that Bitcoin alone is burning more electricity that some countries in Europe.

But that’s not all. Fees are useful also because they prevent users from wasting a network’s resources. For example, it’s not a good idea for hackers to try and do a DoS attack if they have to pay for every single request. So fees keep the network secure and available for significant projects.

So fees are not just an arbitrary thing, They matter a great deal. Now that we’ve (hopefully) persuaded you that fees are important (even good for you), let’s find out in some detail what is the deal offered by three of the most essential blockchain networks.

Ethereum

Ethereum is the first and quintessential second-generation blockchain. That means it created the first smart contract platform using the Proof of Work consensus protocol in which miners run the most important nodes. There are no limitations on the number of miners that can join the network.

They all compete between themselves to solve a mathematical problem (a cryptographic collision in a hash function that will create the next block). The miner who solves it first gets a reward for creating the next block. That needs specialized hardware and lots of power. So miners need to buy hardware and pay for their electricity which is why the rewards must be significant.

In the Ethereum environment, a transaction’s cost equals Gas times the gas price.

Gas: Ethereum needs to know the amount of computer power and storage it must provide to save and complete the transaction. That’s called “Gas.” If your transaction is a simple exchange of tokens, it will be cheap, but if you’re interacting with smart contracts and de dApps, it will be different.

And it could be tricky because the gas amount is computed only after the transaction is done. If you should want to know beforehand how much each of your transactions will cost you will need to ask the dApp provider how much the price has been in the past for similar operations.

Gas price: that’s how much you pay for every unit of gas/computing power, and it depends on your transaction. It’s paid in the native token (ETH in this case). Then miners rank pending transactions by price for blockchain inclusion. Miners get a better deal by processing higher gas prices, so more expensive transactions are completed sooner. The price changes all the time, and if you don’t choose it correctly, your transaction can be left in the Ether (no pun intended) for days.

There’s no doubt that Ethereum is a bonafide decentralized blockchain. But its protocol lacks scalability, and it can be very expensive, or slow, or both, especially when the network is loaded which happens often because of the most trivial reasons, such as betting games.

POA Network

PAO uses Proof of Authority (PoA) as a consensus protocol, hence the name. Unlike Ethereum, the number of miners is limited. Each validator (block producer) builds a block each time. This makes this chain light, efficient, and quick.

Fees are computed in POA using the same formula as Ethereum’s: it’s gas times a fixed price.

Gas: It’s the same definition as with Ethereum.

The difference between POA and Ethereum has nothing to do with the gas definition. The thing is that POA does all the tricks a decentralized blockchain can do while keeping things simpler. The PoA consensus allows for lower gas prices and for a straightforward transaction system. It’s designed to allow horizontal scalability, but not necessarily high loads.

Tron

Yet another consensus protocol for yet another blockchain. In this case, it’s called Delegated Proof of Stake (DPos), and it’s at Tron‘s blockchain’s heart. A limited number of privileged users (known as Super Representatives and elected by the community in a worldwide voting process) are the ones who create the blocks, one at a time. This design has allowed Tron’s blockchain one of the world’s fastest, safest, cheapest, and more reliable.

There are two ingredients needed to calculate Tron’s fees. They’re called Bandwidth and Energy. You take both of them and multiply it times a fixed price.

Bandwidth: this is the piece of the network (so to speak) needed to execute and save your transaction. The price is fixed (almost negligible) for simple financial transactions, but it can vary for dApps and smart contracts. But unlike Ethereum and POA, it can be easily calculated in advance if you just know the size (in bytes) your transactions needs.

Tron’s network allows for a bit of free bandwidth for everybody, roughly equivalent to 15 financial transactions.

Energy: The network needs a certain amount of power to compute and execute your transaction. That’s called “Energy.” If you’re asking for a simple transaction, then the Energy amount you need is zero. But smart contracts and dApps do need a bit of energy (just as Gas in Ethereum), and different transactions cost different amounts.

It’s not as straightforward as with Bandwidth because the SR knows the energy price only after the transaction is completed so, again, you need to have some idea of how previous, similar transactions, cost so you can know how much you’ll need to pay.

Freezing: this is Tron’s extra ingredient. If you freeze some of your Tronix coins, that will get you a bit of free Bandwidth, Energy, and also the ability to vote for SR’s which are often willing to reward voters with free tokens. The more coins you freeze, the more free transactions you get. Freezings also make the token scarcer, so it helps to drive its price up, so it ends up helping users, hodlers (if Tron has any) and SRs.

Tron’s system could seem quite a bit more complicated than the previous two. And it is. But it’s also faster, cheaper, it ensures a number of free transactions for all users.

Even if you overdo things and have to pay for transactions, it’s way cheaper than Ethereum or POA, and it also rewards SRs. Last but not least. These rewards facilitate vertical scalability in the network (unlike POA which is horizontal, or Ethereum, which is basically non-existing).

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

SEED token, Tronwallet DEX, new trading pairs: Tron on a roll

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In order to counter the much-asked questions and expectations, Tron (TRX), the 10th largest digital currency in the crypto-sphere, as anticipated, has decided to enrich Tronwallet by blending DEX (Tronwallet Decentralized Exchange) as one of the new upgrade included in the Tronwallet’s latest version.

In an announcement by the Tronwallet team, the update was made available to be downloaded globally, except some part of the world, where the giant tech guns, Apple and Google are working to ensure the availability of the application to the public.

In addition to this amazing news for the Sesameseed and Tronwallet communities, Tron (TRX) has also confirmed that they are introducing new trading pairs on the exchange (DEX) along with the induction of Seed token, which will also go down in those pairs.

In its release, Tronwallet’s team verified the induction of Seed token’s pair with Tronix (TRX/Seed), in conjunction with the pair of Tronwallet and Tronix (TRX/TRW). The team also gave a little glimpse at its future plans by mentioning that they are planning to make efforts towards introducing Tronwallet as a trading market, where alongside other new pairs, TWX/Seed pair will also be included.

The Tronwallet team, in its official issuance, admitted the fact that the DEX (Tronwallet Exchange) has similarity with Bancor Exchange to some extent concerning functions and style. That said, DEX Exchange brings some unique benefits to the community.

Let’s check out what those advantages are:

  • As Tron’s enthusiasts expected, it is user-friendly and easy to use, Tronwallet DEX will look familiar to Tronwallet as it will be sharing the same interface and style.
  • Crypto community no longer needs to worry about where to keep their savings, or patronage as many people usually surf more time than needed in researching about these little quirks. Tron (TRX) provide them the opportunity to store their assets at which they trust the most, Tronwallet.
  • TronWallet provides the opportunity to do trading without sharing your private key. By doing so, it also accomplishes to solve one of the major concerns of the community; they no longer need to expose their private keys.
  • It also guarantees zero discrepancies and mistakes during the exchange of funds. Tronwallet accommodates its community to trade inside their own wallet. No more copy/paste of website URLs, no more verifications needed for the route direction (whether it is going to the right place) since the exchange is happening right in your wallet.

Talking about some of the other latest achievements that Tron has had in the past couple of weeks, its listing at the renowned exchange MABex (South Asian trading Exchange) is a significant stride.

Also, the migration of the famous Ethereum based game, BitGuild, onto the Tron blockchain is a big success. Just today, the blockchain added three new trading pairs, BET/TRX, FUN/TRX, GOC/TRX, on its decentralized exchange, DEX. Looking at all the recent developments, it’d be safe to say that 10th best cryptocurrency is moving in the right direction.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Tron (TRX) looks strong in the top 10

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For a little while, it seemed like the crypto bears would go away and hibernate as Bitcoin (BTC) went back up to $4000 and its capitalization reached $130 billion last week. But that was just for a little while as the weekend saw the mother of all coins drop under $3,500.

So the trend is still bearish but even in this nearly catastrophic market, some cryptocurrencies are finding ways to outperform other assets and swim against the current. XRP has been a good example. But so is Tronix (TRX) now.

As we write this article, Tron is trading in green numbers (0.93%) which means it’s the best performing coin right now since everyone stands in red (including Tether) currently. The bears have been hugging Cardano’s Ada and Monero’s XMR quite hard, so Tron has overtaken the 10th spot by market capitalization. The achievement prompted Justin Sun, the project’s CEO and founder to express his joy via Twitter, as usual:

Tron has been reporting great news all year long, and the project has consistently met with every milestone in time. So it’s not such a big surprise to see it gain an advantage over other coins.

The new development will be the Tron Arcade. It will be a blockchain gaming fund meant to enable developers. Tron will spend $100 million during the next three years to incentivize the community’s game developers.

This month, the Tron foundation launched another initiative to quicken the dApp developing environment. It will spend a million dollars to inject some momentum into the app developing community.

Next month, the niTROn summit will be held in San Francisco, and it will feature many interesting guest speakers such as Kobe Bryant, the NBA legend, Sam Harrison, Managing Partner at Blockchain, Taehoon Kim, CEO of nWay, and Brian Wong, CEO of Kiip.

The Tonix/USD pair

The current support level is $0.0135, which the asset last visited about two weeks ago. Resistance is at $0.0152, and it’s moving steadily (with some fluctuations) in that direction. Moderate upward trends have been appearing over the last few hours, but it’s doubtful that it will go into a strong bullish zone any time soon.

Tron is becoming attractive to many investors as the whole market remains very bearish. So it’s gaining steadily as shown by the fact it’s now in the top ten. The RSI increased to 54.9, after being as low as 31.05. TRX’s trading range today is 0.013236 – 0.013634. It’s spent more time so far nearer to the higher level.

The Tron/BTC pair

Bitcoin remains very influential over Tron’s price because most exchanges in the world offer the coin paired against BTC and not against the Dollar or other fiat currencies.

The current Tron price is of 0.00000373 BTC. More importantly, despite Tron’s fluctuations against the dollar, it’s been gaining ground against Bitcoin most of the time for the last week.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Tron (TRX) shows up at one of the biggest universities in China, PKU

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Peking University (PKU) is one of the most important and prestigious universities in China, a country that has invested great amounts of money in improving its university system. A few days ago, it held an event sponsored by Tron called “TRON to The Future, Blockchain Technology and Ecosystem” co-organized by DOGI which is a global blockchain game crowd-funded incubator platform. More than 200 students attended the event and received it sympathetically.

The current year has been contrasting for the crypto community. The market has been a nightmare. And nevertheless, the blockchain industry has grown more than any other year in its young history. Adoption is near for many currencies.

But most of the public remains unaware of the technology and its consequences and implications. That’s why Tron held this event at Pekin University. Mass adoption will never happen before mass awareness, and these kind of events are all about bridging that gap.

Many of the blockchain’s industry’s opinion leaders showed up to share their visions for the future and the blockchain’s possibilities. Among these personalities were: Cong Li, TRON’s developer community VP; Yongquan Xiao, founder of DOGI, a global blockchain game crowd-selling platform; Binsheng Wang, special-term tutor for finance at the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Quan Li, partner of Evolution Capital; Yufei Ding from Huobi Research Institute; Xiao Wu, the producer of Cell Evolution; and the blockchain research team of Peking University — Junyan Chen, a 2007-class PhD student, as well as Kunpeng Ren, a Master student and lead of blockchain research group at Peking University.

Tron’s VP for the developer community, Mr. Cong Li, explained the unique features developers can find in Tron’s ecosystem and talked as well about the project’s development history.

Mr. Li also talked about Tron’s Project Atlas which is all about the way in which the BitTorrent network (the world’s largest decentralized P2P network) will be integrated into Tron’s blockchain. He was very clear in that the average BitTorrent user will be greatly benefited as BT joins the blockchain.

Also at the event was Binsheng Wang who serves as a special-term tutor for the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He talked about the social changes that the investment logic in the blockchain market can bring about.

He said that the outbreak of blockchain campaigns in the contemporary world in which we are entering an “era where information transmission requires almost 0 cost”, “the popularity of blockchain has transformed the traditional information Internet into a valued Internet.”

Empowerment was also at the heart of Yongquan Xiao’s presentation, as DOGI’s director for blockchain games “blockchain has established a set of stable and transparent rules. The rules themselves set up concrete constraints on the number of items in the game, the production mechanism, the growth mechanism of players and the gameplay mechanism.

These rules are becoming the rules that players can truly trust and rely on.” DOGI is always practicing and exploring innovative methods as a blockchain game crowd-selling platform. It’s evolving and finding a balance between domestic and foreign game projects.

Then came the time for a roundtable. The participants were Felix Li (Tron’s ecosystem director), Quan Li (Evolution Capital), Ran Wei (8 Decimal capital) and Yufei Ding (Huobi Research Institute). They talked about reshaping the blockchain’s applications and value.

The second half focused on practical applications. Xiao Wu, who is a very well-known blockchain game developer, used “Cell Evolution,” his first work, and Tron’s first dApp (called “The last Trip”) as examples on blockchain games that are both spirited and games.

A Ph.D. student at the university, Junyan Chen, talked about other innovative options for the blockchain (slide-chain and pan-blockchain ecosystems). Another student, Kunpeng Ren, shared his thoughts about the public chain dApp development.

As the event finished, Tron announced a $100 investment in the next three years to bring momentum into the development of blockchain games. Tron’s contest for decentralized application developments officially started a couple of days ago, and it will be open until next January 9th.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

The Bitcoin Oracle has spoken: Crypto winter is here

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Vinny Lingham is a cryptocurrency expert, especially when it comes to Bitcoin. He became involved with it five years ago after a long and successful entrepreneurial career in his native South Africa.

He’s been founder and CEO of several projects. Civic, Gyft (sold to First Data Corp), SilconCape (an initiative to turn Cape Town into a tech hub), and incuBeta. He was considered one of the world’s top 500 CEO’s in 2015. And, yes, he’s got credibility when it comes to Bitcoin as he sits in the Bitcoin’s Foundation board.

Fast Money, a CNBC show calls Mr. Lingham “The Bitcoin Oracle” and interviews him occasionally to gain insight into the cryptocurrency market. The latest interview happened just yesterday. The show’s anchor asked Mr. Lingham for his opinion about the current market conditions for Bitcoin and future prospects.

Mr. Lingham was very clear and to the point. He said he expects Bitcoin to remain bouncing between the $3k and $3.5k levels for a few more months. But if no bull run materializes in about six months and the coin remains stuck, then it will break the $3k support level to go downwards.

He explained further that a problem in the current market is that too many investors are guided by price instead of paying attention to the fundamentals, and that’s what’s been driving the price down.

In Mr. Lingham’s view, Bitcoin is not ready to be a means to store wealth. That’s painfully clear to anybody who bought bitcoins when the price was above USD 10,000. On the other hand, Bitcoin is a very successful payment network that is moving almost as much money as MasterCard on a daily basis.

On reasons to be positive, the Bitcoin Oracle was rather scant. He believes Bitcoin to be too much of a risk as things stand. The great risk is the only way to rip great rewards, as he pointed out, but he was very clear in that it would be so much safer to buy bitcoins when the level goes back up to USD 6,000.

While we don’t believe that this, or any other expert, is an actual Oracle, we do agree with some of his points. The cryptocurrency market would surely be better off if the fundamental analysis was used more than technical analysis.

In other words, if crypto enthusiasts were more interested in coins with real value instead of following speculative trends to make quick money. Let’s remember that Bitcoin is still the same whether the price is high or low. The price doesn’t change its usefulness and value, and the same goes for every cryptocurrency.

As we probably mentioned in this site many times already, Bitcoin, XRP, Tron, XLM, ETN, and a few other digital assets are slowly but surely showing the planet that some real-world problems have no better solution than cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies. That is making the assets useful in many ways; it’s giving them a competitive advantage which will lead to mass adoption as time keeps progressing.

Adoption will change the game for everybody because those few useful coins will have great demand, and the market price will respond to value in the real world and realistic economic forces instead of sheer speculation, which is the main force behind the current market. But until that happens, winter is here indeed.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

The Tron (TRX) Accelerator is here now!

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The Tron Accelerator initiative is live now and waiting for applications.

It’s a project supported by Tron, aimed at empowering developers and bring about innovation in the blockchain industry, more specifically, using Tron’s third generation blockchain technology.

Since last December 1st, developers are invited to send their decentralized application scheme, built upon Tron’s main net, and participate in one of the most exciting hackathons ever hosted.

There are a million dollars in the line in total ($200,000 for the first prize). There will also be eight special prices in 8 categories:

— Excellent Blockchain Game
— Excellent Application Tool
— Excellent Decentralized Exchange
— Excellent UI Design
— Excellent Innovation
— Excellent User Experience
— Most Influential DApp
— Most Onchain Activity DApp

Fifty-six projects will be rewarded in total, with significant prices. The deadline to submit a project closes next year, on January 4th, and judging will begin the next day.

Who will be the judges? Several personalities in the cryptosphere Starting with Justin Sun, who needs no introduction as Tron’s Founder and CEO. But just for the sake of completeness, Mr. Sun was Ripple’s Chief Representative and Advisor and founded Peiwo in 2013 which has become China’s most used messaging mobile phone app. He studied under Alibaba’s founder, Jack Ma, at Hupan University as well as the University of Pennsylvania.

Then there’s Mr. Cong Lee, the US Head of Tron Protocol,  who worked at Google for a decade as a leader for backend projects, data pipelines, frontend, and other projects. He then moved to Airbnb to build the company’s third generation financial data process starting from scratch.

There’s also Vincent Niu. Mr. Niu is DappReview’s founder, which he started this year, in March, which is the largest and most influential decentralized application platform in China. DappReview provides observers with accurate decentralized applications data, user insights and market analytics in all kind of blockchains which include Tron, ETH, EOS, NAS, and many more.

Mr. Niu’s experience in dApps is extensive, and he’s written many reviews on the subject for his project. He’s a graduate from Stanford University and is a game enthusiast.

Alex Wern co-founded Aurora (he serves as its CEO now), and he’s been through Amazon, Adobe and IBM. He prioritizes security and user-friendliness.

Other judges include Daniel Fernández, Haozhi Chen, Dio Lanakiara, Discus Fish, Juliun Brabon and the man known simply as Nick. They are all characters in the blockchain technology industry.

Tron is obviously a superior blockchain platform that so far lacks enough decentralized apps to seriously compete with “old” giants as Ethereum. This effort is part of Tron’s drive to make the platform way more relevant in the cryptosphere by finding new applications, use cases, usability, and usefulness.

This is a global competition which is only limited by language (English or simplified Chinese). This contest is different from others because the developing team will win the prize but also retain ownership of their own project, which is not the rule in software contests.

The winners will be invited to Tron’s niTROn Summit in San Francisco, next year, with all expenses paid by the Tron Foundation up to $5,000 USD.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Zebitex adopts Ripple’s XRP paired against the Euro

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Zebitex is a French cryptocurrency exchange based in Toulouse. It’s the most important French digital exchange and it’s prioritized to offer several crypto coins paired against the Euro. It’s latest digital asset offered in a Euro pairing is none other than Ripple’s XRP.

Among the cryptocurrencies offered by this platform are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Monero.

This platform has been involved in crypto since 2014 (which is a very long time by cryptosphere standards), it sells itself as a very secure environment (protected against DDoS attacks, full data encryption, compliant with PCI DSS standards), it supports cold wallet systems, it has a competitive commissions model (simple, transparent, no extra management fees), advanced charting tools so you can use all that technical analysis you’ve learned since you bought your first altcoin, and good customer support (fast and friendly).

This is a good development for Ripple’s XRP. It’s the first time that XRP will be available for crypto investors directly through the Euro fiat currency. XRP has become increasingly available in local fiat currencies the world over (Indian Rupees, Canadian Dollars, US Dollars, and now Euros).

XRP is becoming a very strong coin in terms of profitability, stability, and value. It beat the legendary Ethereum token for the second spot in terms of market capitalization and it’s the one token that’s remained relatively stable when most others have been losing value at insane rates. Why is that?

It’s because XRP is useful. Ripple’s fought very hard for XRP’s main use case to be successful. That use case is using XRP as a mediating coin that banks and remittances services can use to settle international transfers.

That’s been Ripple’s game all along, and it caused it to be quite unpopular in the cryptoverse. Why? The whole point in Bitcoin (and in cryptocurrencies, in general) according to the mythical cyber-hero, Satoshi Nakamoto, is to get rid of fiat currencies and the traditional financial system.

Ripple is trying to use its currency (XRP) and its blockchain technology to help it instead of destroying it. That’s anathema regarding Satoshi’s original intention. But it’s working in terms of usefulness and it’s rendering the token stable.

XRP was last year’s most profitable coin, it outdid even Bitcoin. After last December, it’s the one coin that’s held its ground in a market that’s been seriously dominated by an intense and protracted bearish run. Over the last eleven months, most coins have had losses that need two figures to be written while XRP has resisted at single digits. It’s even managed to grow compared to the rest.

Zebitex’s decision to list XRP paired against the Euro is meaningful because it’s the first time that this coin is going to be directly available in Western Europe using the local fiat currency. The new pairing lines up with Zebitex’s priority to offer several coins using the Euro, but also with Ripple’s which is always looking to find new markets and use cases for the XRP currency.

The new development will create additional trading volume for XRP in a market that was more or less virgin until now. That will pump up the coin’s prices and stability.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Tron (TRX): Predictions in cryptocurrencies for next year

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The cryptocurrency sector changes very quickly and next year it will be no different. It’s been dominated almost completely by speculative forces but, it’s slowly maturing and at some point in the future, the fundamentals of a crypto coin will become more important in determining value than sheer speculation. Some digital assets will manage this transition better than others. The two factors that will facilitate that will be adoption and usefulness.

In the investor’s view, a business is typically valued in terms of some very time-honored methods such as price to earnings or price to book ratios, PEG calculations, and dividend yields. But you can’t apply these formulas directly to the cryptosphere.

Cryptocurrencies are new assets that are not even ten years old and that, as such, they need new tools to assess their value. But those tools are only starting to come into existence. This has created confusion among investors who don’t know how to estimate a coin’s value. That’s one of the main reasons behind the market’s wild volatility.

In this article, we will explain to you the fundamentals of a rather new blockchain 3.0 project called Tron. It’s barely a year old, but it’s already one of the stars in the cryptoverse. We’ve chosen Tron because it’s solid in its fundamentals, so it has a very good chance to become valuable in the future. We’re not trying to persuade you to invest in Tron or to buy TRX tokens, just to keep it in in your watch list.

The Tron Blockchain: Turning the page

The Tron network includes a native token called Tronix (TRX). It’s one of the most controversial subjects in the crypto world. The fans think that it’s a revolutionary force that will change the internet (especially the web) for good.

Detractors, on the other hand, are quite skeptic and give all the merit in the project’s market value to adept PR and marketing. You’ll have a very hard time finding a balanced, dispassionate analysis of Tron, but that’s what we’ll try to give you.

The protracted bearish run that has plagued the crypto market for more than eleven months now is an opportunity for the new players, like Tron. Tokens like TRX have a chance to drive the market’s next bullish run because of their intrinsic fundamental value instead of speculation.

A viable use case for the Tron foundation is soon to be launched in the forms of the monetized torrent protocol, an eager community that is confident about the project’s future, a brand new smart-contract that allows for the development and deployment of decentralized apps, TRC-20 tokens, and ICOs. Tron’s backers come to the table with a wealth of lessons learned from other blockchain projects and a host of new tools that will make all the difference when the bears in the market finally go to hibernate.

A tale of Tron

Tron’s highest price happened this year, in early January. It’s fallen by about 96% since then and it’s currently trading at $0.014. As it often happens in the market, the fall hasn’t been straightforward but rather sinuous with many highs and lows.

TRX went from $0.028 to $0.045 between 19/03 and 26/03 (60% increment). That rise happened because the project’s final testnet (called Odyssey) was launched and it created lots of excitement and expectations as the community anticipated the Main Net’s arrival in May. The buying pressure we saw during that period ratified the community’s trust in the timely delivery of the new Main Net (which was exactly what happened). When the brand new net came online, the price rose from 0.03 to 0.092 in a single day

By creating an autonomous Main Net, Tron left the Ethereum blockchain and moved to its own which had been on the works for more than a year. It followed Ethereum’s example by adopting the open-source philosophy that is easier to improve by community involvement. It also accumulated a juicy war chest to hire developers and buy decentralized projects that could extend its capacities.

A lot of hype surrounded the launch. The project’s charismatic and maverick leader, Justin Sun did his part to create expectations and several other crypto social media influencers helped as well. They managed to make believers out of many crypto enthusiasts. Suddenly it became clear for some that Tron’s platform could really give Ethereum a run for its money as the cryosphere’s network of choice when it comes to smart contracts and decentralized apps.

Other factors also intensified the hype and speculation. Tron was among the first few well-funded projects that went away from the Ethereum network and the ERC-20 token standard (EOS did the same, more or less at the same time). The lack of precedents for this scenario added interest.

The “The Ethereum killer” thing died out rather quickly. About a week before the main net’s release, the bears visited the TRX market. The price is yet to recover from that.

“Build something great and they will come” is something of an ethos that rings true in the technology industry. Tron’s strategy (and that of many other players in the blockchain) would be better conveyed by a phrase like “make them come, and let them wait while we build something great”

But the market isn’t waiting and it’s been driving TRX market capitalization down since last May.

The case for Tron (TRX) in 2019

Tron’s blockchain is in a transition period. It’s finding its way to become a legitimate cryptographic asset platform, but it’s struggling and it’s not walking very gracefully towards that goal. On the other hand, it boasts a number of formidable projects in the works that hold a potential to be like nothing seen before in crypto.

Project Atlas is one of those projects, probably the most interesting one. It’s about bringing the BitTorrent decentralized network (the planet’s biggest decentralized network with 45 million daily active users, and 170 active users monthly) into Tron’s blockchain. The move became possible after Tron bought BitTorrent last June. Only a few BitTorrent’s users will be aware of or interact directly with the Tron network, but sudden access to such a gargantuan pool of potential users is nothing to sneer at.

The main feature in Project Atlas is expected to be a TRX reward program for BitTorrent seeders. In BitTorrent “seeding” happens when a user that has successfully downloaded a file from the network keeps it available for other users to download. This maintains the network active because, being a P2P protocol, there is no central server from which users can download content.

As things stand right now in BitTorrent, there’s no reason for sacrificing bandwidth by seeding other than altruism or a libertarian sensibility. An incentive system based in TRX, seeders will be literally paid in altcoins to host their content for longer periods of time. Theoretically, that would improve the torrent network functionality as more content will be available and seeders will be happier.

The BitTorrent protocol allows to upload and download of all kinds of files, especially of large media files (audio and video) and it’s already a decentralized network. In this regard, it lines up very well with Tron’s mission which is to use blockchain technology to decentralize the web so a global free content entertainment system substitutes the current central authorities in the online entertainment industry.

BitTorrent includes a brand new web platform that allows for partial video and audio files to be played while they’re still downloading. Yesterday, the company started to accept digital assets (TRX, BTC, and BNB) as a means of payment for their premium software. That boosted the TRX price by around 30% in less than a day.

BitTorrent’s transformation into one of Tron’s decentralized apps that includes token rewards for seeders will be a huge milestone for Tron. But no date has been announced for Project Atlas to come online yet.

A different (and very publicized) use case for TRX is its adoption by PornHub, one of the globe’s largest providers of adult entertainment content. The video platform is now accepting TRX tokens as payment for its premium services. This is another huge pool of potential users as the site was visited 28.5 billion times last year. PornHub’s monthly membership is at 832 TRX which is about $10 USD.

But there’s a catch for both the BitTorrent and the PornHub use cases. Most of the content in both networks is free, so either paying for the premium membership or getting TRX for seeding is hardly going to attract too many users.

Only 1% out of $81.5 million daily users visit PornHub’s premium section, according to the website’s own data. Only a fraction of that one percent are new subscribers and even fewer will be willing (or able) to pay with TRX or Zen (the other crypto payment option supported by Pornhub). That being said, the partnership has brought Tron closer to the mainstream.

Partnerships and community

Tron is attaching itself to well-known brands, organizations, and individuals. Kobe Bryant, the NBA superstar player, will be the keynote speaker at niTRON, the project’s annual conference which will take place next January in San Francisco.

A basketball player is maybe not the most intuitive choice for a blockchain conference, but Byant is not your run-of-the-mill star athlete. He is a partner at Bryant Stibel, a venture capital firm with a strong interest in technology ventures. Among those ventures, there are sports websites, sales platforms, and mobile game publishers, to name just a few.

So Mr. Bryant is indeed experienced in investment strategies and fund management, so chances are that the keynote will be substantial and not just all about PR. And yet, PR will be Tron’s main achievement as it will create buzz and attention from the mainstream (and from crypto) by securing a household name like Kobe Bryant.

Ripple tried something similar at their last Swell conference by having former US President Bill Clinton delivering the event’s keynote last October.

The excitement surrounding the event, together with upgrades to Ripple’s xRapid platform made XRP rise in price. It happened while the cryptocurrency market was relatively quiet, and it made XRP stand out very clearly.

In the cryptocurrency market’s short history (it will be ten years old next January), good marketing and public relations have a proven track record as tools that create buying interest among retail investors. Yes, that’s somehow childish and the market would be better off if most retail investors were experts chasing value. But things are what they are, and retail investors are more important in crypto than in most other industries because institutional investors remain very reluctant to join the cryptosphere. That is why Justin Sun’s masterful marketing tactics have created a lot of noise and had given Tron’s price much of its past momentum.

The retail effect is intensified in the periods of high volatility in which speculative pressure is the main force behind changes in price at the exchanges that support TRX.

Tron’s historical data reveals that the project’s Github activity is not exactly great. On the other hand, it has a very strong presence in all social media where it’s been able to attract lots of followers very easily. The Tron Foundation alone has 353,106 followers alone. It’s grown by almost 30% over the last eight months. Justin Sun, the leader and founder boasts more than 593,000 followers.

Solume.io is a service that provides social volume metrics. It measures the mentions a given token gets on the relevant spaces in Twitter and Reddit, and it analyzes them into positive and negative mentions. Tron’s mentions are mostly on the positive side of the social volume. Even when the token’s price is moving sideways, the project remains able to develop positive social traction. Over the last 90 days, it’s been mainly negative only once, and that happened in a day that saw 15% losses.

Even the latest price drop (which came about some twelve days ago) didn’t change this trend as positive mentions are still considerably more frequent than negative ones. The tweeting activity by community members shows that they support the project with fanatical fervor and that they remain bullish about the token even when the market’s sentiment is the opposite.

This community behavior is in stark contrast with most others in the crypto environment. Monero, for instance. It has basically the same market capitalization as Tron (Monero is 11th, Tron is 12th) but its social media presence is quite scant by any measure available. Also, Monero’s positive social activity is basically flat when the price is flat. Tron’s keeps rising even as the price is stuck, and even when it goes down.

This ability to inspire a community and provide it with HODL fuel is not a random thing. The Tron Foundation and the project’s leaders are constantly reaching out to the community and cultivating their relationship. Advertising of the high production value kind, several yearly events available in live streams, monthly updates in many different languages.

Not the Ethereum Killer after all… so far.

Tron’s network is up and running as you read this. It verifies transactions using an innovative consensus algorithm called Proof of Authority which has the advantage of not being disruptive. In this consensus model, block publishers are selected by community voting.

But there is something that still seems to be missing, namely, the genuine developer activity or use cases for the coin apart of speculative trading.

Tron’s platform includes the TRC-20 technology, which is an alternative to Ethereum’s ETC-20. It allows for Tron users to create their own Tron-based cryptocurrencies and launch ICOs. The most referenced among Tron’s tokens is Tron Market Watch (TWM). It’s meant to be a payment tool for Tron’s own decentralized cryptocurrency exchange that includes all the tradeable TRC-20 tokens such as TRWJ. 14 coins are listed there so far.

The project managed to achieve a soft cap level of $310,000 but it fell very short of the $5,000,000 hard-cap goal and, by the time the raise ended, it was less than $1,000,000. The IGG token, which is the most successful in the TRC-20 family also failed to raise much money ($110,000)

Most of the tokens available at Tron’s DEX seem rather basic, a little too abstract (concrete information is lacking), and they don’t have backing or funds.

Tron’s current state has nothing to do with the way in which Ethereum exploded in 2016 and 2017.

It’s no secret that the current sentiment about crypto is bearish. And it’s even worse when it comes to ICOs. Yet SYLO, which held an ICO over Ethereum is currently valued in more than 10 million dollars. So no, Tron is not about to threaten Ethereum’s position as the king of smart contracts any time soon.

Decentralized applications.

Tron’s dApp store has 14 dApps currently listed. Most of them are gambling games and many have limited transaction volume (or users).

Comparing Tron’s utility and activity with Ethereum’s is very complicated with so few apps available. The latter has a much bigger and manifold dApp catalog that includes decentralized betting, crypto collectibles, and distributed data storage. All in working order and running on the network. Yet both blockchains have similar metrics of volume and activity and Tron’s casino has become very popular very quickly in the last few weeks.

Vulnerability to regulatory risk

The US securities laws leave some room for interpretation as they’re based on philosophical principles rather than in rigid rules. It’s very hard to determine the true usefulness and nature of a fledgling token such as Tron.

Token transactions could easily be considered “investment contracts” as defined by the Howey Test. This would make TRX a security within the United States and not a commodity or a currency. If that should be the case, it would have to comply with the tighter constraints of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

That is something that no cryptocurrency in the market wants because it means enhanced investor protection, and TRX would need to trade on secondary markets. That would bring about fines and would cut some trading channels.

The spectacular value drops of 90% or more that we’ve seen this year in TRX and many other digital assets make it more urgent for SEC to step in and start regulating ICOs and foundations. Projects like Airtoken (AIR) and Paragon (PRG) were already ordered to give their investors their money back as they failed to comply with the securities law.

“Any profit comes from the efforts of a promoter or third party” is the way in which the Howey test fourth rule defines a transaction as an investment contract. Tron is probably not sufficiently decentralized to avoid it.

As things stand today, TRX’s market capitalization, price, and trading interest result mainly from the Tron Foundation’s activities. It was this organization who launched the first ICO and it still provides leadership for the project as a whole. TRX is not really useful yet because user participation is still very limited. But as dApp activity and ICOs keep moving forward, that could change.

It’s anybody’s guess what SEC will decide about Tron. It’s a well-capitalized project that has the resources to challenge any charges so SEC is more likely to go after smaller projects that won’t offer that much resistance. It also happens that Tron and Justing Sun are non-American. They operate out of Beijing, China, so that could also make it difficult for SEC to enforce the law on them in the near future.

Conclusion

Tron is capitalized at almost a billion dollars and it’s supported by many exchanges on the planet. The charismatic maverick and founder, Justin Sun is very famous and respected in Asia. His activity in social media has been impervious to negative market developments during the last year. Through BitTorrent and PornHub they have access to 120 million potential users a year, and it’s now a fully autonomous blockchain that runs its own main net. Those are Tron’s pros.

And now, for the cons. There are too few dApps and ICOs on the platform. And it could be exposed to disruption by regulators if SEC construes TRX as a security instead of a utility token.

Image courtesy of Pixabay

TronWeeklyJournal coin (TRWJ) hits the Tron DEX

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The Tron foundation takes communication with the Tron community very seriously, which is one of the reasons that said the community is very united behind the project’s leadership. One of the efforts to keep communication clear and flowing is the Tron Weekly Journal which aims at becoming the very best Tron news organization.

In the Journal’s own words: “Tron Weekly Journal is an online digital content platform which aims to bring all Tron world news under its umbrella. Although there has been immense churn and activity in the Tron community, there is no centralized portal or information pool where investors or Tron enthusiasts can gather necessary information. We are a team of experienced writers and analysts seeking to bring the latest Tron news and forecasts to the community through the Tron Weekly Journal platform.”

But we are not just a newspaper of sorts. The Journal is also issuing a Tron-based cryptocurrency (which is already listed at Tron’s DEX) called TRWJ. It’s a multipurpose coin that will be used for the benefit of content creators.

Also, services like advertisements, promotion, and every publishing transaction needed by a site such as tronweekly.com will use TRWJ as the medium of exchange. Additionally, the Tron weekly team will be airdropping some tokens at the end of each sale phase.

Despite its young age, TRWJ is already one of the top 3 TRC-10tokens in the Tron market and, as the Journal keeps expanding its audience, it’s bound to keep doing well.

Tron DEX

Yes, Tron has digital cryptocurrency exchange of its own. It’s one of the sections inside the tronscan.org website. This is a specialized exchange that trades only in Tron-based digital assets (TRC- 10 tokens) paired against TRX.

For instance, here you can buy the dice token which you can use to play some betting games that are already running in the Tron main net. There’s also the IGG token, issued by Intergalactic Gaming which allows you to join in the online video games economy.

Tronscan.org is a very intuitive website that no Tron fan should miss. It gives you a Tron wallet, access to the exchange, information about all the tradable coins. If you have an account and a wallet here, you can even issue your very own TRC10 token and release it into the exchange!

You can also monitor the blockchain activity regarding nodes, blocks, transactions, transfers, accounts, statistics and foundation addresses. The smart contracts running in the network, are there for you to see, and you can vote in the Tron Super Representative elections. In many ways, tronscan.org acts as a “control panel” four your Tron account.

Besides Tron DEX exchange, Tron also has another wallet called Tron Watch Market. The token sale of the wallet ended about a month ago. Although it is not yet fully finalized, once it’s done, the Tron community should be expecting the trading of TRC10 tokens on the platform.

Tron is quickly becoming a full-fledged cryptoverse inside the cryptoverse. That’s why it’s already the world’s third busiest blockchain, and it keeps gaining followers all the time. It has all the features Ethereum had when it became big, but it has a lot more new things to offer, and it has no gas price (but you have to pay for bandwidth and energy).

Tron is trading at $0.0152 as we write this article, and it’s in green numbers to the tune of 1.99%. It’s capitalized at $1,005,404,567 and ranked 12 at coinmarketcap.com.

Overall, Tron is pushing towards a decentralized system. With the addition of new tokens on its new decentralized exchange, we could see a big push in the worth of Tron very soon.

Tron CEO Justin Sun expects 400% growth in DApps in next 30 days

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Tron Foundation published the second report on DApp weekly performance last week. The report hinted rise in the creation of DApps as many developers have started to build their decentralized applications on Tron ecosystem. Currently, more than 20 DApps are up and running on its blockchain.

The usefulness of the DApps is attracting more grounds and some of the top DApps on DAppRadar like TRONDice is going very well. To be more specific, TRONDice, which is a gambling DApp stands in green by 283%, traded 66,399,382 as of the day. Likewise, TRONbet, DiceBet, and WINToken Games are also in strong position.

So, more than 20 decentralized applications are running on Tron blockchain now already. Due to the wide utility of the DApps, it is highly anticipated that Tron mainnet will be supporting 80+ Dapps in upcoming days. That’s something the blockchain firm founder believes so. Earlier today, Mr. Justin tweeted to express his views about current status DApps and his expectations concerning the growth ahead:

As the different groups of developers have started to develop more and more DApps on it, it is more likely that Tron mainnet will have a rise in DApps running on it. But it remains to be seen that whether 400% growth is attainable or not.

Tron has made an excellent progress so far this year. Yes, it’s going down but the market has not spared anyone including Bitcoin since the king seems to be nosediving at its worst. It is worth noting that despite the decline in price, Tron has been consistent in making progress; some of its recent strides include the launch of its Accelator project, successful Mainnet launch, and DEX release.

Yesterday, Tron CEO Justin Sun tweeted to declare another achievement of Tron DApps that Tronbet has surpassed Ethereum IDEX by performance and usage. Undoubtedly, Tron-based DApps are gaining popularity due to the Sun-led blockchain’s abilities and degree of efficiency which probably is only because of the tireless convictions of Justin Sun and his team.

TRX market overview

As of writing, Tron is 12th best cryptocurrency by market cap, trading at $0.012 and is down by 2.30% in the last 24 hours.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.