Tron (TRX) is again in the news for the wrong reasons. There were previous reports of Tron whitepaper been plagiarized. This time it is accused of copying code from Ethereum Virtual Machine and Ethereum (J). Let’s see this news in detail.

Digital Asset Research Published Post

Digital Asset Research (DAR) published a Medium Post about Tron copying code from other cryptocurrencies. In their Medium Post, they’ve mentioned that the project has copied the code from Ethereum(J). The post states that TRX later added the relevant license (i.e., LGPL license language to its files), but there are still cases of code being copied without giving reference to Ethereum. There are only slight changes to the code, but the majority of it is copied from Ethereum (J).

Ethereum (J) is the pure-Java implementation of Ethereum protocol. It is a library that can be embedded in any Java/Scala project to get full support of Ethereum protocol. It was first developed by Roman Mandelei. Since they’re relatively old libraries, it might contain more bugs and could also be unreliable.

Legal and Technical Risks for Tron

The copying of code not only opens up legal risks for Tron, but it also brings technical risks with it. As mentioned earlier, Ethreum (J) is an old library with unreliable code and a lot of memory leaks. This is a serious risk for Tron, and they must address it as soon as possible before their platform is adopted by more users.

This doesn’t end here, because the Tron virtual machine is also a copy of the Ethereum virtual machine and the changes that have been made on Tron will attract a lot of hackers who could potentially attack its network. Moreover, the network uses the Delegated Proof of Stake algorithm which is not considered safer than proof-of-Work algo. Therefore, Tron adoption may not be as smooth as expected and it could be exposed to many technical risks and hacks. There could be many technical issues because the code was modified from an architecture that was built for some other purpose and changing it to cater for its functionality would bring in a lot of bugs.

Highly Centralized Project

TRX is highly centralized and a large amount of its tokens are centrally held by its founders. Justin Sun is its founder, and he is also the founder of the mobile app Peiwo, which is used by 10 million people in China. Tron also acquired Bit Torrent recently, and it saw its price surge shortly after the news was announced. Currently, the migration is happening from the Ethereum blockchain to it Mainnet. Many exchanges are supporting this migration. We strongly hope Tron will address the above issues in order to stay secure with minimal risks of getting hacked. Otherwise, it would be a disaster considering its huge market cap and the number of investors holding its tokens.