What is Tron(TRX)?
cryptocurrency·@cryptoasis·
0.000 HBDWhat is Tron(TRX)?
https://blockonomi-9fcd.kxcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/tron-trx-guide.jpg
The namesake of a famous science fiction movie, Tron invokes memories of slick black motorcycles, LED-lighting and Daft Punk. An ERC-20 token built on the Ethereum blockchain, Tron swiftly rose among the top 20 cryptocurrencies, and became one of crypto 2017 greatest success stories. Whether this success can be attributed to an effective brand, a celebrity CEO, or to the boom of cryptocurrencies at large, Tron is the talk around town and will more than likely remain in the spotlight in 2018.
For a day trader looking for short-term gains investing in Tron might seem like a no-brainer. A high circulating supply coin with an attractive design and a capable marketing team; from a glance Tron looks like it can give the top 5 cryptocurrencies a run for their money. For those looking to take out a long-term investment, however, a closer analysis is of the highest importance. What has driven its phenomenal success ([at the time of writing](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tron/#charts) sitting at ~6 billion market cap): is it pure hype or genuine potential and investor interest?
# What is TRON?
* A $6 billion [ERC-20](https://www.coindesk.com/ethereums-erc-20-tokens-rage-anyway/) token launched in September 2017. The market cap of Tron has grown 10,000% in just 5 months. Tron like other cryptocurrencies is capable of eliminating the middleman, it is also a distributed storage facility enabling users to access entertainment content and producers can receive funds directly from the consumers.
* Tron is a blockchain-based decentralized protocol that aims to create a worldwide free content entertainment system. The protocol, being decentralized, will allow each user to freely publish, store and own data. Peiwo, an app developed by the CEO of Tron with over 10 million users, is set to become the first Tron-compatible entertainment app.
* The team members of Tron are believers in web 4.0, the idea of designing the internet and applications on top of decentralized blockchain-technologies. They focus on the entertainment industry currently controlled by super-corporations like Google, Facebook and Amazon. By handing the ownership of the data pool to the user, they aim to empower the individual users of the internet.
* Tron has a high circulating supply 66 trillion, twice more than Ripple, and is a cheap coin with a price significantly below $1. In 2017, TRON attracted investor interest, but has, as of yet, [little to show](www.trustnodes.com/2018/01/05/tron-14-billion-whitepaper-no-product) for a working product. This is only natural for a company at this early stage of development of Tron, but expectations for 2018 are high.
# Team Overview
Unlike many cryptocurrencies (unfortunately!), Tron has a transparent, competent team behind them. Their figurehead CEO, Justin Sun is a protégé of Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group and was the former Chief Representative in Greater China of Ripple. In 2017 he was chosen into the prestigious list of 2017 Forbes Asia, 30 under 30.
https://blogs-images.forbes.com/rogeraitken/files/2017/08/Wang-1200x800.jpg?width=960
He is a capable public promoter who knows how to peak and maintain the interest of investors. This is evident from the phenomenal growth of Tron in 2017, and indeed from his very active twitter profile with over 450k followers. Speed and efficiency of communication are key factors in the crypto-space and Justin Sun seems to understand this, as he constantly keeps the public up to date with the current state of progress. The Tron foundation, for example, releases a [weekly progress report](https://medium.com/@Tronfoundation), showing a high level of transparency and communication.
According to their GitHub [profile](https://github.com/orgs/tronprotocol/people), they currently have 15 active team members working on the project. In virtue of being a top 20 contender in the overall market cap, however, Tron should have no shortage of capable programmers and experts up for hire. Indeed they appear to be expanding their team with both [seasoned experts](https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/tron-includes-senior-developer-alibaba-team/) and [young talented programmers](https://twitter.com/tronfoundation/status/940665286411374592).
# The purpose of Tron
The niche of Tron is in the global online entertainment industry: a domain ripe for decentralization. In ten years this field has seen accelerated growth, especially so in Asia, where the average annual increase exceeds 1000%. Tron sees the highest monetary potential in online gaming and gambling, social media and in the usage of recreational/lifestyle apps like Tinder and Instagram.
All of the above are billion dollar enterprises almost entirely controlled and and managed by a select few centralized corporations. These globally used platforms like Facebook, Youtube and Instagram are all part of a centralized internet that Tron wishes to improve upon. The term [web 4.0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry_4.0) has been used to describe a decentralized revolution in the structure of the internet. In a decentralized web, applications, social media and gaming platforms are owned and controlled by the users themselves. This process of decentralization could eventually change the global pattern of the internet.
In currently used centralized web platforms like Youtube, the content-creators do not in any meaningful sense own the content they publish. Read what cyber-lawyer Daliah Saper [has to say](tubularinsights.com/youtube-copyright-ownership/) on the ownership of content on Youtube:
>"YouTube always allows the owners to retain ownership of their work. But what they require in their terms of service is that you grant to YouTube a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual license to freely sub-license, re-distribute, re-publish, monetize, and whatever they may want to do with your video. They’re basically requiring that you grant YouTube all of the same rights that you have with your video, short of turning over your rights to them."
In other words, by uploading content onto Youtube, the corporation automatically receives inalienable rights identical to the legal owner of the video. At the same time Youtube designs and has the ability to freely change all the rules that govern the users in the space; including the rules by which the content-creators are rewarded, rules of fair-play, privacy of the users, and suitable content allowed into the space. All of these are questions decided by the judgment of opaque centralized authority-figures susceptible to corruption and ignorance.
In a decentralized entertainment platform, however, this centralized figure of authority is removed and replaced with a distributed ledger dependent on consensus algorithms which require authorization by each user in the space. This system allows users to freely transact and create their own digital ecosystem. For example in [Dtube](https://d.tube), a cryptocurrency called Steem is used to grant tokens to content creators according to preset criteria like the sum total of views on their channel. In online gaming this can be realized as rewarding the best players, unlocking achievements and so on. Through the use of blockchain technology all sort of transactional interactions between independent users become possible. The Tron foundation is working towards providing a platform for building decentralised apps ("dapps" for short) in the rapidly growing online entertainment industry.
# Future growth prospects
So far the success of Tron has been phenomenal. The Tron ICO was launched 9.09.2017. It entered the market with the price of approximately $0.002, and peaked at its all-time high in January 2018 at about $0.25 cents. That is a 10,000% increase in about 5 months! A large part of this growth is undeniably caused by the overall surge of investor interest in cryptocurrencies. So how much growth can an investor realistically expect in 2018?
First, taking into account the obvious advice that one should never buy at all-time highs, a good price to take out a position on would be somewhere around 500 satoshi (about $0.05 cents)or lower. This should be easily achievable if the current trend of strong BTC volatility continues.
In a highly optimistic scenario, Tron with its circulating supply of 65 trillion could reach a total market cap of $65 trillion in the course of 2018, which would make the price of one TRX token $1. A growth prospect of 400% from its current all-time high, and a 1900% increase in case of the recommended price of entry. To put this prediction into perspective, the current all-time highest market-cap of Cardano, the lowest top 5 coin, is around $30 trillion. Assuming that the cryptosphere as a whole keeps expanding in a similar rate, a conservative estimate would put Tron's 2018 peak price in line with the current market price of Cardano which would place the price of Tron at $0.5 cents. For medium-risk holders this would be a very good selling price for 900% gains. In my humble opinion, Tron is likely to achieve this in 2018 through mere momentum and peaked interest in cryptocurrencies alone.
# Cons and conclusion
There have been a few controversies that have damaged the reputation of Tron. The first is that their originally published whitepaper seems to contain [plagiarized content](https://www.ccn.com/trons-whitepaper-appears-plagiarize-filecoin-ifps/) taken from Filecoin and IFPS. The tech sector is not as strict about copying code as academia, but nevertheless this is in bad taste and raises questions about the ability for original contribution within the Tron team. With the team expanding throughout 2018, however, technical incompetence should not be a problem.
Another potential red flag is the exceptionally wide focus of the Tron project. A few sections of their whitepaper and Roadmap read like something out of a science fiction movie, rather than a business-plan. While browsing through their website and finding many embarrassing spelling errors I was left with the impression that they could benefit from a touch of realism, so they do not get hung on their success and give it their all in 2018. Nevertheless, this might predominately be a marketing strategy and they have managed to create an attractive brand with a big international following. 
*An awkward typo I found on the Tron website.*
A long-term investment in Tron is certainly a risk, albeit one that could pay off handsomely. Looking at the proposed plan for the TRX token, it seems that in order for the more optimistic $1 dollar price prediction to materialise, it will need to to become the go-to token of exchange between a number of high-rank entertainment platforms; Justin Sun needs to solidify as many deals as possible with newly created, popular web applications that are actively used and loved.
Even more so, because one of Tron's primary goals is to simplify transactions between applications. As they point out in their whitepaper: current entertainment apps are short-lived and when they fall out of use, the user information and local credit system are lost. If Tron were to be able to create a general decentralized system in between entertainment applications user input costs would be lowered and interactions between apps should become more sophisticated and rewarding. For example, credit earned in a user's favourite entertainment platform could be used in his other favourite platforms, or could have a direct effect on his success across all those domains.
Furthermore, the Tron whitepaper argues that taking into account the huge withdrawal and investment supply in entertainment systems any sort of transaction system between diverse centralised applications results in huge transaction costs for the user; widespread adoption of Tron would reduce these costs considerably. All of these, of course, only if Tron does not fall out of use itself. Nobody can predict the market, so take these predictions with a grain of salt and always do your own research.
Links to follow:
[Justin Sun's Twitter](https://twitter.com/justinsuntron)
[Tron Foundation Twitter](https://twitter.com/Tronfoundation)
[Tron Discord](https://discordapp.com/invite/fmZQ9hp)
[Tron Telegram Group](https://t.me/joinchat/GIjGvkK7dhnO8gapCPfqew)
[Tron reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/Tronix/)