The founder of the TRON project

Justin Sun is a Chinese entrepreneur best known for his key role in the TRON blockchain project. Sun is listed as the CEO and founder of the project, which initially marketed itself as a blockchain-based entertainment platform but later pivoted to a general purpose blockchain platform that aims to overtake Ethereum as the go-to blockchain for decentralized applications (DApps).

The TRON blockchain shares some similarities with EOS, another blockchain that uses a delegated-proof-of-stake (DPoS) consensus algorithm to gain a performance boost over the proof-of-work based Ethereum. Of course, there are lively debates about the actual level of decentralization that is achieved through these DPoS blockchain platforms, but they are beyond the scope of this article.

TRON has its fair share of detractors, but an equal or perhaps even larger number of passionate proponents. TRX, the token issued by the polarizing project, is the tenth largest cryptocurrency thanks to a market capitalization of $1.31 billion.

TRX’s relatively strong position in the cryptocurrency space is undoubtedly solidified by the project’s active marketing strategy and airdrop programs. The TRX token itself was initially distributed through airdrops for ETH holders. TRX first existed as an ERC20 token, but the TRON mainnet was launched this year and the TRX token is now its native asset.

Sun quickly became one of the most prominent people in crypto

Sun is (in)famous in the cryptocurrency community for his aggressive promotion of TRON on social media accounts, often announcing that an important announcement will be made at a later date in order to create buzz. The 28 year old entrepreneur’s Twitter account has 669,000, followers, making Justin Sun one of the most prominent personalities in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space.

Sun was previously employed by blockchain and fintech startup Ripple, where he served as a company representative for the Greater China region. Outside of blockchain, Sun also founded Peiwo, a live streaming application. The founder of TRON also holds a masters’ degree from the University of Pennsylvania, which he obtained after receiving a bachelor’s degree from Peking University.

Earlier in 2018, Justin Sun made waves in both the blockchain and the broader tech space when he acquired BitTorrent Inc. in a deal worth $140 million. The TRON and BitTorrent teams are now working on “Project Atlas”, which aims to connect the two ecosystems. One potential application of the integration between TRON and BitTorrent is that users could be incentivized to seed torrents by receiving TRX or other blockchain-based tokens in return for their services.