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Tron (TRX) hits 2.42 million transactions in a single day

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As it’s been usual throughout the year, the good news keeps flowing for Tron even as the market remains under a strong bearish run and Tron’s token’s price (TRX) is still low because of the Bitcoin pairing it enjoys (or suffers) in most of the world’s exchanges.

This Monday the Tron network processed 2.42 million transactions in a single day. Why does this matter at all? Because Ethereum, which was the platform on which Tron started, has never processed more than 1.349 million transactions in a single day.

This news is interesting for Tron fans, of course, but any conscious neutral observer in crypto should notice this and draw conclusions. In this article, we will explain to you why.

Ethereum, founded by Vitalik Buterin who is still the project’s leader,  was a pioneer. It was the first second-generation blockchain network; it created smart contracts as well as decentralized apps and that allowed for many other projects to use the network to launch ICOs for tokens based on ETH20 technology and to create blockchain networks that, while functioning over the Ethereum network, were not the same entity. That’s how Tron and EOS came to life for instance.

Ethereum was a breakthrough in crypto, but it’s been plagued by problems over the last year or so. Users have been complaining about the network’s lack of scalability which, in turn, makes it slow or unavailable at times. But the gas price has also become a disadvantage for many users because it’s just too high (and this is a network in which gas price gives you priority for your transfers to be included in the next block).

All those disadvantages gave some of the Ethereum-based projects reasons to develop autonomous blockchains so that they could become independent. But not just independent, also scalable, faster, safer, and much cheaper. That’s what Tron did.

Since Tron became independent, releasing its main net in May this year, many experts have considered it could overthrow Ethereum’s dominance in smart contracts and decentralized apps because everything you can do in Ethereum you can also do in Tron. But in Tron is way faster and cheaper. So there’s been a bit of morbid interest in seeing how and when Tron will take over Ethereum as the world’s premier smart contract and ICOs network.

That hasn’t happened so far. Tron’s dApp catalog remains rather limited, and not that many new projects have chosen to use TRC20 instead of ETH20 to create new tokens and issue ICOs.

But that’s exactly why this seemingly sterile statistic matters so much. Tron may not have that many users, apps, contracts or ICOs as Ethereum. But it’s already processing almost twice as many transfers every single day as Ethereum on its best day.

So it’s early to declare Ethereum dead. Even earlier to say it died because Tron killed it. But Tron keeps growing as Ethereum keeps shrinking. Ethereum lost its place as the second largest coin by market capitalization to XRP a couple of weeks ago while Tron went from 13th to 10th last week.

Tron is here to stay and grow. And while Ethereum doesn’t address the problems it’s had for more than a year now; it’s risking that very status.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Tron TRXMarket lists three trading pairs as it goes live

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Tron announced that it will launch its new decentralized exchange and will list three trading pairs: BET/TRX, FUN/TRX, GOC/TRX on the platform. That has happened now already. The good news was broke on the official Twitter page of TRXMarket:

Confirming the initial news by TRXMarket, the CEO of Tron Foundation, Justin Sun, also twitted a few hours after that the decentralized exchange is about to be launched and will list the aforementioned trading pairs. The CEO further added to the tweet that this is just the beginning for the decentralized exchange as more developments are set to come up very soon.

According to Tron, TRXMarket will be a decentralized exchange – just like Binance and the rest – where the exchange and trading of Tron-based tokens can be performed. Again, the decentralized exchange will enable the trading on tokens that are produced on Tron’s MaInNet.

Additionally, TRXMarket is also part of Tron Super Representative (SR), as Sun Tweeted a few months ago that TRXMarket will run for Tron Super Representative.

Subsequently, it has also been stated from the company officials that TRXMarket is not controlled by Tron Foundation, due to the fact that the two bodies are distinct from each other. It seems that Sun and his team are poised to maintain a ‘hands-off’ attitude towards the control of whole Tron ecosystem as they aim to make sure it is completely decentralized.

Concerning the tokens that would be listed, as of now, Tron community will now have the opportunity to only trade/exchange BET, FUN, and GOC and as time goes on, more tokens will be added to the exchange.

Nonetheless, there are several positive hints that TRXMarket will also be the decentralized exchange for other digital coins such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple in the future. The decentralized exchange will also to be available across the world, thus, playing a vital role on Tron’s aim to decentralize the internet.

Tron seems to be getting close to achieving its goals every day and the TRXMarket is the most-fresh proof. TRXMarket is a big stride for the blockchain platform, as it has the ability to convert 100-billion ERC20 tokens in few days with fewer efforts. The TRXMarket would be a part of the DAG (TrustNote minable Directed Acyclic Graph) public ledger, due to the inclusion of TRC20 tokens and protocol.

DAG helps to remove any type of blockchain issue acquired by traditional blockchain methods. The DAG system is actively protected by TrustNote consensus, ensuring the scalability of the system. No doubt, this is a big development for the future of TRC20 tokens.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Tron’s Tronix (TRX) and mass adoption

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Tron has kept advancing at a very fast pace. It’s barely a year old and it’s already released a developer’s toolkit and an accelerator competition that will help quicken the availability of dApps in Tron’s network.

Tom Mao, one of Tron foundation executives, in charge of technical division and writing, recently told CodeXpert that Tron has found a way to solve the scalability problems that have plagued Ethereum and Bitcoin. Those two cryptocurrencies have a massive consensus protocol system that makes them very energy intensive and has centralized the mining activity in a few, powerful hands.

“So what Tron does, what it brings to the table that’s different from Bitcoin and Ethereum – especially different from Ethereum – is that it’s essentially using a very unique delegated proof of stake system where TRX holders have the right to vote for Super Representatives who they feel the best help with the Tron ecosystem and widespread adoption of TRX. So that helps to really democratize and decentralize the power – as opposed to the mining cartels – down to basically you and I who can buy TRX and exercise our voting rights.”

Tron executive added,

“There’s a process to apply to be a Super Representative Candidate (SRC) and the role of a Super Representative (SR) is to produce blocks for the Tron network. But what they really do is they’re trying to help spread widespread adoption of TRX. Make people aware of Tron and TRX. And then also hopefully sponsor projects that create DApps in which TRX is used and adopted.”

Talking about the Tron SRs, Tom said,

“The top 27 Super Representative Candidates become Super Representatives, and the elections are held every six hours.”

Mr. Mao also detailed the recent technical developments, explaining how exciting they are for the Tron community’s growth. He specifically included four major toolkits for coders. Tronbox, Tronstudio, Trongrid, and Tronweb. What are those? Keep reading!

YouTube video

Tronbox is a framework that allows developers to integrate dApps into the Tron network; Tron studio is an IDE for compiling, testing and deploying smart contracts; Trongrid is a load-balanced API service that allows you to access the Tron blockchain; Tronweb is a colossal API call library that allows for integration with Javascript, Python, and PHP.

He also invited developers to bring their Ethereum dApps into Tron and explained why it’s a good idea in terms of incentives.

Justin Sun, Tron’s founder and CEO has also expressed his interest in having Ethereum projects adopt the Tron blockchain and he explained why: it’s a better network. Cheaper, safer, faster. And some crucial projects (Everdragons, for instance) are taking the invitation seriously and moving to Tron.

Tron has always held the promise to be the definitive Ethereum killer. It hasn’t delivered on that yet, but it’s delivered on everything else so don’t be surprised if, sooner or later, Ethereum loses its developers and users to Tron. Remember that even Tron used to be an Ethereum project that chose to become independent because of all of the problems that have been plaguing Ethereum over months now.

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.

Better Tron DEX, better trading: GOC is online!

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There’s a new cryptocurrency exchange platform specialized in TRC20 tokens (which are based on Tron’s blockchain). It’s called GOC, and it’s already online. It’s the first Tron-based decentralized exchange supporting TRC10 and TRC20 tokens.

The new platform launched on the 3rd of this month. It will allow users to exchange Tronix-based tokens paired against TRX. It also allows users to create their own tokens. This means that when TRC20 initial coin offerings become a thing, as ETH20 ICOs became in the Ethereum network, GOC will probably be the place that will hold them.

Tronscan, which is a website that functions as something of a control panel for Tron accounts, included a decentralized exchange system for the same kind of tokens in the beginning but those tokens have been slowly moving from Tronscan to GOC, so it’s expected that the latter will end up being the “official” Tron-token platform sooner rather than later.

The new website is very friendly but it charges transaction fees (0.2%), and that could open the way for the new Tron-based trading platform to appear in the market in the next few months.  On the other hand, GOC has no limits on the number of tokens you can trade in any given session, which is an advantage and allows for all these new tokens to be traded in higher values.

Some airdrops are on the menu, and they will start happening soon. Stay tuned in our website to find out the correct dates.

GOC is already listed by Cobo Wallet which is a mobile wallet designed to manage cryptocurrencies. It serves both institutional and retail clients. MathWallet is also supporting the DEX. It supports the TronLink plugin wallet just as Tronscan, which is probably the easier wallet to use since it’s just a free chrome extension you can use in any operating system to keep track of your TRX and other TRC20 tokens.

This development is important for Tron in particular and the cryptosphere in general because it’s another direct challenge to one of Ethereum’s strengths. As you probably know, Tron started as a project running on Ethereum’s network, where it stayed for half a year until it developed and launched its new main net.

Ever since it became an independent blockchain, it’s proven to perform way better than Ethereum in terms of speed, and also way cheaper because it doesn’t charge for gas (you do have to pay for energy and bandwidth, but that’s another story, and they’re relatively cheap). This has created the perception that Tron will end up being too attractive to current Ethereum users and developers to ignore, and that many of them will migrate their projects en masse. Justin Sun in person has expressed his interest to welcome the ETH refugees into Tron.

And now, with the new GOC online, that seems only more likely.

It’s an exciting time to watch Tron grow and develop as new things, and project come online every month, the platform keeps expanding and, slowly but surely, new decentralized applications are starting to appear in Tron’s network.

Last but not least, the token’s value is growing when compared to the rest of the market. Tron is already 10th by market capitalization, and it’s been quite solid as the bearish run has protracted for almost a year now. It overtook Cardano and Monero to reach the tenth spot, and its capitalization was as high as 1.01 billion only a few days ago.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Is Tron (TRX) the new member in Robinhood’s merry band?

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As the year keeps nearing its end with all the bad news it gave to the cryptocurrency market, a few coins keep gathering good news despite the general environment. Tron is one of those projects. This time it comes from Robinhood. It’s a popular crypto trading app which doesn’t charge for commissions, and it recently flirted with the idea of including Tron as a listed digital asset.

Robinhood answered to a tweet in which it implied an interest to support a few new coins in the app. As a Robinhood user (which is still not available in all states) you can trade in Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Dogecoin (DOGE) and Ethereum Classic (ETC). But they want to add some more, and Tron could be at the top of the list.

Here’s the tweet (alongside the answer) at the root of all the speculation:

Robinhood’s tweet is really not that informative. They didn’t say which coins they’re considering seriously, let alone any kind of timelines. But, it seems clear that it is quite serious about expanding the app’s ability to deal with several other assets.

Robinhood is a very young company that got started only this year, and it’s become quite popular among retail investors. This is no small feat as retail investors dominate the crypto markets since institutional money has been reluctant to come into crypto.

The platform is trying hard not to follow in Coinbase’s steps, which is often criticized because of the limited choice it offers to users, so it’s been trying to include more assets as quickly as possible. And people in the Australian region use more Swyftx as compared to Coinbase for buying and selling Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron, and other cryptos.

It started in just a few states in the US but it’s been opening up to new investors steadily so it’s now available in several states: Alaska, Arkansas, California, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, South Dakota, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Virginia, and Wyoming.

As we write this, coinmarketcap.com reports a trading price of USD 0.013425 for Tronix, and it’s trading in small red numbers. But you shouldn’t let those red numbers fool you. TRX is already the tenth coin by market capitalization (it was 12th only a few days ago) which means the market is interested and making it grow, even in the current bearish climate.

Tron has an incredibly supportive community and a leadership that has delivered on every promise timely, always. It’s very ambitious, and the token’s price has remained very cheap because it’s usually paired against Bitcoin (as opposed to local fiat currencies) which has held it back.

We, as many observers in crypto, are quite confident about Tron as a project and as a digital asset that will bring about a new generation of successful investors in a future that is not very far away from the present. It seems Robinhood shares our views in this regard.

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

Once bears lose their grip on market, Tron would become wonderland

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Yesterday, just after 40 hours as the bearing clouds started to scattered away from the whole industry, same as other currencies, Tron (TRX) joined the race to determine who wins its previous position back that they had at the moment when the bearish trend started.

It was a matter of just one day for Tron to regain its previous position in the whole market (was 11th largest currency on 14th of November). While other giants were struggling to reclaim their previous spot, within only the first hour of the day, Tron outranked the sharks by attaining 6.58% and at the day’s closing time it reached up to, remarkably, 32.77% hike.

The latest update is that Tron’s trading volume surpassed the collective trading volume of top 5 currencies in the crypto arena yesterday. Total trading volume of the top performers (Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, BCH, XLM) by market cap, was 1,138,613 – on the other hand, Tron had not just outclassed the figure but also stood nearing 2 million mark as its total trading volume rested at 1,833,912 yesterday.

Yes, that’s not the case now since, alongside the rest of the market, Tron is in the red-pool too. Yet again proving itself ‘the’ sleeping giant of the market.

https://twitter.com/mishalederman/status/1068140849018667008

What stirred the recent Tron spike up?

Although, Tron, being as one of the top achiever in the recent times, it couldn’t keep itself from getting caught to the catastrophic effects of the most recent bearings which kept on going for almost couple of weeks, the longest one of the year according to many experts.

Albeit, the thing worth noting is, because of all those achievements and associations that the Sun-led blockchain has deployed in its baggage since the beginning of October, haven’t gone to waste, but those are the reasons that helped it to become capable of growing quickly whenever the right time comes (bearing ends).

So, although bearing kept on going for long, Tron’s enthusiasts had some leap of faith in its capability and hence they were just waiting for the clouds to scatter, and as expected it bounced back stronger than before.

To reminisce back at the most recent achievements that Tron has successfully captured throughout the year including during the whole market’s massacre, few of them are as follows.

  • Got listed on the accountable number of exchanges (66 to be specific) in a single year alone.
  • Achieved the mark of half a million accounts on its mainnet in 4 months only, which you cannot ignore easily.
  • Seeing good surge in numbers of DApps, as the days go by, can also be termed as the major catalyst for increasing its popularity.

At the beginning of this month, November, Tron went on thrashing the big guns of the market, for almost a week, in daily transactional volume; the cryptocurrency had also signaled to be the major stimuli to become, what it now is, ‘the’ sleeping giant.

Consequently, keeping all the things we talked above, it would be safe to say that Tron might skyrocket once the market catches some steam.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.