Founded by Justin Sun and the TRON Foundation in 2017, TRON is a decentralized, open-source cryptocurrency and network with aims of aiding content creators in receiving remuneration for sharing their works. The whitepaper, unfortunately, is heavy on Chinese characters, but a useful translation of their self description comes by way of TwentySumCrypto's Medium article:
"TRON is a world-leading blockchain-based decentralized protocol that aims to construct a worldwide free content entertainment system with the blockchain and distributed storage technology."
In short, they're creating an environment that cuts out the content-controlling middlemen like YouTube, Spotify, the Google Play Store, Apple Store and the like. The idea has attracted some attention, which gave TRON a boost (although it has since cooled off) at the beginning of the year. TRON currently has a market cap of $2,990,096,297, or 277,763 BTC, and holds a value around $0.045478, with a 24-hour volume of $190,917,000 and a circulating supply of 65,748,192,476 TRX.
TRON: Competition, Pros and Cons
TRON's goal is to "heal the internet," as they see it. As such, they want to wrest control from corporations such as Google, Amazon and Facebook, returning it to the hands of content creators. To this end, they are constructing a platform that will liberate data and provide free access to it, enable content creators to gain digital assets when their content propagates, allow personal ICOs to distribute digital assets, and allow for a distributed digital asset exchange (think games and similar commodities).
It's a bold promise, one where the content creators stand to earn more on their own than they currently do through intermediary sites. To achieve this, they have unveiled a multi-step plan that should culminate by 2023. As detailed on Hacked:
Exodus: TRON will implement simple distributed file sharing for its users, sans blockchain technology.
Odyssey: TRON will incentivize the creation and early adoption of its entertainment community by content creators. Creators will be paid for their efforts through a tipping scheme.
Great Voyage: TRON will introduce personal ICOs, allowing the transformation from "fan economy" to "fan finance."
Apollo: TRON will launch its own tokens for decentralized trading, increasing economic vitality.
Star Trek: TRON will transition its content platform to a decentralized gaming platform with "autonomous gaming and predicting functions." This is to generate more market capitalization.
Eternity: TRON will address fundraising and monetization concerns, allowing investors to inject money into popular games.
This, they claim, will allow them to expand what they call the "Web 4.0 Ecosystem," a growing network they say boasts more than 100,000 members from more than 100 countries. Key features of this network are buzzwords many have seen bandied about before -- digital assets, blockchain-based smart contracts, decentralized applications -- all resulting in the fresh entertainment market that TRON envisions. This is not their only goal, however, as they'd eventually like to see their ecosystem adopted in areas beyond entertainment.
If this all plays out as they expect, an entire global society might function on the back of TRON's platform, decentralizing a variety of businesses and industries in the same manner. Not all share their optimism, however. As detailed in the Daily Dot, scandals have cast doubts on TRON's ability to achieve any of its lofty goals. It started with the accusation of plagiarized elements within the whitepaper, which may have been lifted from Filecoin.
Sun defended the whitepaper, blaming translation issues for the confusion, but further troubles struck with the announcement that TRON would supposedly be collaborating with Baofeng (the Chinese version of Netflix). This announcement, users noted, was misleading, since "the partnership was actually with a new blockchain division within Baofeng, called the BCN."
Then there was the claim that Sun had "sold 6 billion TRX for $300 million," leading to speculation that the TRON CEO might be running a scam of sorts. Sun denied these allegations as well, but it opened the door for even harsher criticism, coming by way of Bitcoin.com, TrustNodes and, most notably, the Washington Post:
"[TRON is] the cryptocurrency that's valued at over $7 billion even though it doesn't actually exist. It's just a white paper filled with a bunch of buzzwords."
A major test for TRON going forward will be turning around the negative assumptions about the company and convincing a wider swath of the public that they are who they claim to be.
The Uses of TRON
In spite of the blowback, TRON does seem to have some legitimate partnerships and real-world use cases under its belt, detailed again by TwentySumCrypto. Most impressive of these is the release of the game Pet Planet/Love.Pet, a virtual pet game that's seen as an answer to Ethereum's CryptoKitties. If successes like this one continue, it might show that the TRON platform is a viable one for the creation and propagation of content and digital assets, as they envisioned.
The Future for TRON
TRON is still in the early stages of their roadmap, and, in spite of controversy and sliding values, there are arguments that 2018 just might be TRON's year. Users can likely look forward to an increase in the number of TRON's partnerships and an expansion of the content put on the platform, along with the integration of TRON and TRX with other apps to facilitate transactions.
