After having launched its mainnet recently, TRON (TRX), a smart contract platform, which also ranks 11th on the list on biggest digital currencies by market cap, has had another interesting development. Justin Sun, CEO and founder of TRON Foundation, announced his campaign to run for one of the available 27 block producer positions on the network via a Twitter post.

I am excited to run for #TRON Super Representative alongside excellent candidates, in the hands of our community. Voting is a crucial part of the #TRON ecosystem and embodies our mission of decentralization and democracy. Every vote counts! #TRX $TRX https://t.co/0R7cefF3Ws pic.twitter.com/s84NWAmQWG — Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) July 18, 2018

Block producers are in charge of validating transactions, creating blocks in the network and competing for rewards and are elected by the token holders. 100 million votes are needed to be elected a TRON block producer and unsurprisingly Mr. Sun was quick to amass the required amount in a mere 24 hours. As of press time, he has received over 120 million votes, although such number still places him in the eighth spot, way behind the leaders TeamTronics, who have managed to secure more than 322 million of votes.

There was speculation that Mr. Sun might receive preferential treatment, since his Tron Foundation is in possession of 33.2 billion TRX tokens. However, the CEO reaffirmed that this was a personal decision and was quick to distance himself from the Tron Foundation in this case, in an effort to shut down conflict of interest speculations.

He claimed that, “As the founder as well as a candidate, I am determined to go through the selection process like everyone else, which displays TRON’s inclusiveness and openness as a decentralized and autonomous community.“

Curiously, Mr. Sun participated in the election without publishing a manifesto, which was a mandatory requirement for everyone else, which was met with some criticism from the TRON community. The manifesto contains broad information on the candidate as well as details on the hardware, which will be used to run the node. Sun also did not reveal his personal TRX holdings and it remains unclear whether he used any of them to fuel his candidacy.

As usual, the crypto community took to Twitter and other social media sites to voice their concerns with some users getting worried about Sun’s increasing influence over the network.

Totally agree but as a democracy led by the people/community an ethos of Tron’s whitepaper an insider who pulls the strings is a bit like Congress deciding on crypto being “real money” and having Trump sign it off, full kudos @justinsuntron but sometimes smaller is better — Colin O’Kane (@ColinOKane24) July 19, 2018

Mr. Sun has recently made headlines when he decided to acquire BitTorrent – a popular peer-to-peer file transfer app. The acquisition was a prolonged and troubled one, as negotiations have started back in September 2017. Several other prospective buyers tried to intervene, which resulted in Mr. Sun filing a lawsuit against BitTorrent. Eventually, the deal was completed, with most of its details still shrouded in secrecy.

Following the election announcement, TRX price decreased by 7%, alongside most other major virtual currencies, except for the crypto lynchpin bitcoin, which has remained relatively stable. TRX trades for around $0.036 as of press time, back to the levels before the price surge earlier in the week.

Image Source: “Flickr”