“Decentralized internet” protocol TRON’s TRX token surged almost 8 percent Monday, October 8, after CEO Justin Sun claimed its forthcoming update would see it beat Ethereum on speed and EOS on cost.

Odyssey 3.1, the latest version of TRON, will go live at 8pm SGT, Sun confirmed on Twitter as a result of “community consensus.”

The changes include the launch of the TRON Virtual Machine, which will allow developers to test smart contracts before they transfer to the TRON mainnet.

“The TRON Committee function & (Tron Virtual Machine) will go live, marking the start of the Smart Contract Era,” Sun continued in the tweet, stating boldly:

“TRON will be 200x faster vs. ETH, 100x cheaper vs. EOS. dApp developers & users, this one is for you!”

TRON’s fortunes continue to edge upwards as information trickles through about the status of its ‘Project Atlas’ integration with content sharing platform BitTorrent, which it acquired in July of this year.

TRX has nonetheless suffered in the 2018 cryptocurrency bear market, currently trading at around $0.027 per token compared with all-time highs above $0.21.