There are a handful of blockchain projects of the second and the third generation that are constantly compared amongst them. We’re talking about Ethereum, Tron, EOS, and Cardano. In this article, we’ll focus on Tron and Ethereum because both of those blockchains have developed something of a rivalry, and it’s a good idea to understand both the similarities and the differences between them.

Tron vs. Ethereum

Tron began as a project running on Ethereum, and that’s one of the reasons for which a lot of people believe that Tron is nothing more than a new version of Ethereum on steroids. Things are not that simple.

Both Tron and Ethereum are projects which include a token (TRX and ETH, respectively) but, unlike Bitcoin, or Litecoin, or most other blockchain projects the point is not in the token. These are programmable platforms that allow for the development and deployment of smart contracts and decentralized applications.

Ethereum was the first network that featured those capabilities, which is the main reason why it has so much prestige and influence. And that’s also the reason why Tron and EOS started based on Ethereum.

Tron on its own

As Tron became independent of Ethereum, on last May, we saw a lot of talk in the cryptosphere about the “Ethereum killer.” That was because the technical specifications promised by Justin Sun (Tron’s CEO and founder) gave you as a user or developer every capability to do anything you could do in Ethereum.

Except that it would be much faster, much cheaper, and much easier because Tron adopted standard programming languages instead of Ethereum’s languages which are all native and not the kind of thing every programmer knows out of the box.

As Mr. Sun announced Tron’s new specifications, a few weeks before it was launched, Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum’s founder and leader) used his Twitter account to express his skepticism about those specifications. Some would have even called it a bit of a mockery.

But the Tron network was released, and it turned it to be every bit as good as promised. How is this possible? The main reason is: contrary to some popular opinions, Tron is not a rehash of Ethereum. It’s a whole new technology developed using different, more powerful tools and platforms, and that’s why there’s a difference.

It’s all under the hood

Not to get too technical, but Tron is a whole new blockchain built on top of GRPC and DPos. We could explain to you what that means, but it suffices to say that these are the same tools Google uses to come up with all its magic.

Ethereum, on the other hand, is based on JSON-RPC and Pow. Again, not to get too technical, but you surely know Google, and you know how well it works (too well, in many opinions, as a matter of fact).

So, here’s the thing to take away from this post: Tron has nothing to do with Ethereum anymore. It’s considerably more powerful, reliable, and in only a few months it’s managed to have more dApps in the world’s top ten than Ethereum.

It’s innovative, well designed, and well developed. Ethereum was terrific when it first appeared, but Mr. Buterin, able as he is, has not been able to keep his network competitive in the current times.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.