What is Tron Coin?

The Tron Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in 2017 and based out of Singapore. Tron aims to deliver a decentralized entertainment platform which is structured so that those who create the content are rewarded. This decentralized platform is enabled through the use of blockchain and cryptocurrency technology. This article aims to deliver a complete overview of Tron including an in-depth look into their objectives and how they will achieve it, the team, the technology and the opportunities and threats they may face.

What are Tron Foundations Objectives?

To consider Tron’s value proposition let’s first think about today’s media and digital content industry and the potential challenges surrounding it. Platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and Facebook has allowed the masses a platform to share their content and get their message out to the world without the need for a media deal. For example previously music artists needed a recording deal and those wishing to appear on screen needed a movie / TV deal.

Media sharing sites such as YouTube have revolutionized this however some have begun to believe that the power of control being centralized amongst a number of companies has created a media oligopoly. This small number of companies with a large amount of control such as Google and Facebook are able to censor content plus the economic models of these companies has been engineered to generate the maximum profit for the companies involved not the content creators.

Tron seeks to create a platform that allows content creators to freely distribute digital content and be rewarded proportionally, this in turn should lead to greater quality content being created. They aim to achieve this with a number of core values:

1.Data creators (users) will have the fundamental ownership of data, and the internet should be decentralized.

2.Those who make a contribution to ecological TRON will be entitled to proportional profits according to rules.

3.All forms of contribution should be of equal quantitative value.

4.The fundamental objective of TRON is to provide services for the public.

5.Contents should derive from people rather than capitals which should be used to reward people rather than to control people..

Tron Roadmap

Tron is a very ambitious project that has a published roadmap extending ten years into the future for the coin. The key milestones each have snazzy sci-fi inspired names and each is a key step on their ambitious journey to become a decentralized media platform

1 Exodus: The free platform for peer to peer distribution, storage, and content.

2 Odyssey: Economic incentives put in place to encourage content creation and empowerment

3 Great Voyage: Individual ICO capabilities

4 Apollo: Ability for content producers to issue personal tokens (TRON ERC20 Token)

5 Star Trek: Creating a decentralized online gaming platform, monetizing traffic

6 Eternity: Developers can create their games on the TRON network; crowdfunding for the games is also made possible via the TRON network

Exodus is the current phase and plans to continue until December 2018 and aims to provide the distributed storage platform as Tron state “A mechanism of upload, storage, and distribution which is based on peer-to-peer and distributed content”. The Exodus phase also includes the steps to launch the Test Net and Main Net which aim to migrate Tron away from the Ethereum blockchain on to its own dedicated blockchain.

The second phase Odyssey focuses on creating the reward system that will incentivize and reward content creators. This is key because no matter the tech driving Tron the platform will only be as good as the content it delivers. They need to ensure that the incentives are such they attract the best content creators.

Phases 3 and 4 focus on ICOs and allowing content creators to launch their own branded tokens.

Phases 5 and 6 focus on building an online decentralized gaming platform and the ability to fund development by the community.

Team

Tron have a significant following online which in part can be attributed to their charismatic front man Justin Sun. Tron CEO and founder Justin has 424K followers on his Twitter account which is less than a year old, a significant amount of buzz has been created regarding his relationship will Alibaba founder Jack Ma. Sun has self-proclaimed himself the protégé of Jack Ma having attended Hupan University a very selective university ran by the Alibaba founder

Sun has had previous success with the Peiwo App, which aims to be China’s answer to SnapChat . The innovative app aims to connect users by analyzing interests and 10 second voice samples to find likeminded individuals. Peiwo has more than 10 million registered users and more than a million active monthly members.

Other accolades held by Sun:

Master’s degree from University of Pennsylvania

2015 /17 Forbes Asia 30 under 30

Former Chief representative for Ripple (XRP)

Other team member include former Alibaba Chief Data Mining Expert you can view further details of the team at the Tron website.

Tronix (TRX)

The payment mechanism that will drive Tron’s content platform is Tronix (TRX), this effectively is the Tron Coin. Those sharing content on the Tron platform will be rewarded for producing quality content judged by upvotes, likes etc. with payment inTronix.

TRX will act as the mediator between all individual company cryptocoins built on the Tron blockchain. For example if you were rewarded with MusicCoin for sales of music you could use this to purchase books with BookToken also hosted on the Tron blockchain. The transaction would be completed in the background with TRX acting as the intermediary, meaning that different branded coins can be spent transparently with the work being done by TRX in the background.

To encourage long term holding of the token if a user locks their TRX up they are able to earn Tron Power. Those with Tron Power (TP) will be given more privileges in the ecosystem such as voting writes.

The Maximum supply for Tron Coin is set to 100,000,000,000 TRX (Tronix)

Partnerships

oBike – Is a bike sharing platform that supports more than 10 million uses in 20 countries. In app purchases will be made via the oCoin which as discussed earlier will convert into TRX in the background. Not only will purchases be made in oCoin but it will also be possible to earn them as you cycle

Peiwo – The app which was also founded by Justin Sun now allows integration with Tron. App users can tip their favorite content providers plus use it to deposit and withdraw TRX

Game.com – Are a game developer looking to enable the use of cryptocurrencies to purchase games and entertainment content. Currently available is Pets Planet where players can use TRX to purchase pets

Giftco – A decentralized gifting application that allows the creation and exchange of virtual gifts built on Tron technology

Mainnet Tron Token Swap

Tron has been based on the Ethereum blockchain, testing is taking place for a move to their own blockchain. The launch of the mainnet in the testing phase has already taking place and is expected to be completed by the end of June 24th 2018. Then at midnight on the June 25th the Genesis block will be launched.

Part of the process of moving to a new blockchain on the mainnet will be a token swap away from the ERC20 tokens. Users keeping their tokens on an exchange will need to take no action, those keeping their funds in an exchange will need to deposit TRX to an exchange before June 24th GMT+8

You can see the official timeline on mainnet and guidance on the token swap in this official article from Tron.

Opportunities

Huge potential market size – The global entertainment market is valued at $1 trillion. Tron would only need to take a piece of such a large market to be successful

Team – CEO Justin Sun is well connected, respected and has previous pedigree with successful technology projects and in cryptocurrencies, with a senior role at Ripple

Interest in decentralization – The internet giants are coming under increased scrutiny and there is greater interest from the public in decentralization, following news such as the net neutrality ruling, YouTube censorship and Facebook data privacy scandal

Existing Partnerships – Tron already has a number of established partnerships with large multinational corporations

Chinese connection – Although China has not been favorable towards cryptocurrencies some believe that Tron is well placed in China should things change. Since Sun is well connected, already has a successful product in China and has been recognized by Forbes as one of the best young entrepreneurs in Asia.

Community – Tron has one of the largest and most actively engaged communities in the cryptocurrency space

Threats

Overly ambitious – The project is very wide ranging and has massive scope. Will it be possible to deliver on so many different and ambitious objectives?

Allegations plagiarized whitepaper – Allegations were made against the Tron team that the whitepaper was plagiarized from others. Tron responded saying that this was an error in translation from the Chinese version and that credit for the source was missed

Lack of information in English – Tron is Chinese focused and information for English speaking investors has lagged the original Chinese version and as discussed above has been prone to errors. This potentially puts English speaking investors at a disadvantage

Inertia – Any social platform is only as good as the number of active users on the platform. Building up the initial user base that will drive the platform will be challenging

Internet Giants – Trons objectives threaten to disrupt the money making model of massive internet companies such as Facebook and Google. Should Tron start to become successful these internet giants will have very deep pockets to fund activities to try and compete with Tron and develop their own solutions more focused on the content creators

Tron Wallets

TRON is currently an ERC20 token until the release of the main net so it may be stored on any Ethereum compatible wallets for example:

MyEtherWallet – Free open source website wallet which allows users to store their own private keys locally.

MetaMask – Browser extension, compatible with Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Brave browser. This is not only a wallet but also you can interact with dApps and smart contracts.

Ledger Nano S – Hardware wallet

Trezor – Hardware wallet

How to buy

Tron (TRX) crypto can be purchased from the following exchanges. Currently these exchanges do not accept fiat currency so you will need to use Coinbase to purchase Bitcoin which will then allow you to transact on these exchanges.

Binance

Upbit

Bittrex

Bit-Z

Binance

CoinEgg

OKEx

Bit-Z

Liqui

Huobi

This post is not financial advice and please be aware of the risks of investing and do your won research before investing in any cryptocurrency .

Resources

Further resources to understand Tron Coin.

Website

Reddit

Twitter

Facebook

Github

CoinMarketCap

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