A Closer Look At Tron - My Impressions

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While everyone is so focused on what's happening on the STEEM blockchain I decided to look at what's going on with Tron. I feel it's important to look at where people come from, their home environment before we can judge what they will do outside of it. I can only base my decisions on the information I find and if you have other information please feel free to drop it in the comments, but here's what I know so far about Tron.

The relative success of Ethereum and its virtual machine and smart contracts on a blockchain made it one of the most successful cryptocurrencies to date, rivalled only by Bitcoin. Its success would naturally attract other chains to follow suit and we see chains like EOS and Tron emerge as front runners to become so-called "Ethereum Killers".

Image path - nichemarket.co.za

The Introduction of Tron

Most people now know Tron due to Justin and his marketing and see it as the Billion Dollar market cap coin with 700+ dapps one of the most popular dapp chains and a leader in the crypto space. People feel that ETH and EOS are too expensive because they have a whole coin bias and like the idea of Tron at a few cents so they can pick up a large amount to stake.

Also, the promise of future coin burns to reduce supply is a reason why Tron Bag holders sit steady in waiting while earning around a 3% APR for staking their coins. On the surface, it looks like a reasonable investment but after taking a deeper look I am not so sure. I feel its become more about marketing and massaging the numbers and narrative than actual growth and adoption.

Screenshot 20200308 at 12.13.45.png

Image source: - coingecko.com

Decentralisation

If we take a look at Tronscan, Trons only block explorer (which leaves me uneasy, I mean can you really trust a single front end that displays blockchain data?). We can see that 2 exchanges Binance and Poloniex are part of the top Super Representatives and this only gets bigger as they get more of the block Reward/staking.

This is not to mention the tokens owned by Tron and the Zion account which is their account used during the migration from ETH ERC-20 to their own chain. This also is a threat over the decentralisation of Tron as the Tron Foundation can vote in their own Super Reps at any time as reported by CoinTelegraph. The so-called decentralisation of the chain is only through the will of the Tron foundation and not actual system protocols working in the correct manner.

Tron also recently came under fire for its hard cap removal and block reward increase two aspects which are fundamental to the value of a blockchain and the reason why many choose to invest in a chain.

Marketing

If you know anything about Tron its probably because of their marketing, they are the most Hyped coin in the space thanks to their leader Justin Sun. He is a source of eyeballs but also a central point of failure, and in crypto, I think this is a grave mistake. There is a reason Satoshi remained anonymous, there is a reason Charlie Lee sold his LTC because one person cannot be a target for the chain if its plans to thrive.

Justin has also not been shy of controversy with the recent exchange collusion reported and even money laundering accusations in the past., to plagiarism of the whitepaper to being part of a scam Ponzi scheme. I am not saying this is all true, but where there is smoke, and often so, there is sometimes fire.

Tron realises that this bad press can knock them down in a space where FUD can make or break a coin so they're constantly putting out material in a numbers game to drown out the bad press. This has worked to an extent but what it has done is polarised the crypto space around the project, pulled in novice and ignorance investors who are yes men and build an echo chamber around the coin as a protective layer.

In this way, it can shield itself from a lot of the negative opinions and obfuscate a lot of what has happened and will continue to happen with the project.

Dapps

If we look at Trons so-called 800+ Dapps according to Dapp Rader almost all of the top dapps are gambling apps. That's hardly inspiring to onboard the masses. To compound this the majority of these dapps are failing and the best performing dapp only has 2600 users.

I think it's safe to assume these users of the gambling dapps are Super reps and big Tron bag holders looking to earn more Tron either by having a dapp or playing. There isn't much actual value being created with the coin and its empty exchange of funds to make the network busy but not actually productive.

According to Dapp Radar, 90% of TRON audience interact with gambling dapps, 10% with exchanges, and 0.1% with games. The exception of the TronWatch Market exchange, the top five dapps by daily activity on TRON in 2019 are all in the gambling and high-risk category.

Even in that context, TRON’s most popular dapp – TRONBET, which was relaunched as WINk in 2019, saw peak activity in late June of 4,000 daily active unique wallets, dropping to less than 2,000 by mid-December, if this is your premier dapp it's nothing to really rave about or run home to in this crypto space. Tron realised their need for dapps and offered up incubation programs but nothing has been announced,

It's only big differentiators were dapps that were purchased and migrated to Tron such as BitTorrent, DLive and Poloniex.

When the funds run out

Tron in its current form looks like a chain living on borrowed time, sure it has funds in crypto and fiat-backed by the Tron foundation to keep it going but it has no real value for all the money spent. It's now focusing on acquisition through purchasing dapps with moderate success, luring dapps from ETH and EOS with the promise of funds and support but this has done little to grow the chains reach. Games are effectively irrelevant, exchanges are small and low value, while gambling and high-risk dapps are the obvious key category, both in terms of users and value.

Tron is not trying to innovate its way to success but trying to buy its way to success and hoping to rely on the Chinese markets numbers to be able to prop it up in the future if can reach some sort of critical mass locally. It will continue to burn through funds until either it runs out or reaches a point where the amount of users justifies recapitalisation.

You're only alive until you're dead

When it comes to investing the hot hand fallacy and recency bias are hard ideals to break. Tron on the surface looks great and brimming with potential but given the points I've listed above I think a lot of it is smoke and mirrors and we can see a lot of mismanagement coming to light. If the STEEM standoff is anything t go by I think it will unlock even more to what is going on with Tron as more eyes with different ideas start to take serious note of the project.

Have your say

What do you good people of steem think? Is Tron an emperor with no clothes on?

So have at it my Jessies! If you don't have something to comment, comment "I am a Jessie."

Let's connect

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58 comments
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I am not a Jessie, but today I'm running out of word after run through your post. Agreed every point you've noted here. More to worry, how is it going to happen with the rest of the 70mil ninja stakes.

Posted using Partiko Android

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I think a lot of people caught up in the hyper and valuation and aren’t looking at more than that with Tron! It’s the same with Theranos and Enron, people couldn’t see the cracks appearing infornt of their eyes and when they fell apart it was a shock! We mustn’t forget that a companies job is not its valuation but the product it puts out

My personal feeling about the ninja mine is he can have it but he should keep it on say poloniex which he owns so it doesn’t mess with the governance and use it to provide liquidity on the new exchanges he claims he will get us listed on that should help him earn back a sizable amount of his investment

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Wouldn't be surprise if he offer another exchange a certain amount of ninja steem if he can recoup the top witnesses seats and force the fork through.

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Neither would I, he seems like a get what I want at all costs type which is why his so erratic changing his mind and narrative all the time trying to figure out what will get him what he wants without having to compromise

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Wow. Fantastic post with many good points. I would not invest even a cent of my money into Tron. ETH and Steem are the way to go as long as we can retain decentralization.

Posted using Partiko iOS

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I think smart contract chains are going to be popular and their won’t be one winner! Some chains will just be better suited for certain tasks than others! I’ve picked ETH, NULS and Cardano as my gambles in this space and bought some stake in that

Some like Tron and EOS but I’m yet to be convinced as yet

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Resteemed it

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Thanks so much, wow 5 resteems this things getting some real traction

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The games that I visited on the Throne were a complete deception - I always lost. The tokens that I bought on the Tron went to zero - everything turned out to be a hoax - I no longer have business with the Tron and do not advise others.

Posted via Steemleo

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Well that’s the nature of gambling the only one who really wins is the house! I have no problem with gambling I don’t gamble myself! If you want to be a gambling support chain by all means that’s fine too!

But then don’t expect other communities and Interest sets are going to jump onboard the same way! I think they realize that which is why they started this buying spree of dapps

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Looking like this whole Tron take over of steemit inc. is for the wrong reasons... Steem community must get assurances or fight this . Decentralization cannot be compromised.. PERIOD.... resteemed .... Good post @chekohler

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That’s really where my issue lies, whether the current witness oligarchy are the right way forward remains to be seen! I just think that one person coming in and owning an entire chain we all invested time and money into sets a precedent that we can be owned and bought off!

If you were someone with deep pockets and why not play in the centralized space theirs plenty of money to be made in private block chains too! I see it’s a mismatch of ideologies!

I think that the best way forward is for him to run Tron and anything in that eco system as he sees fit and for those who want something both dapp owners and users can come to steem

No reason they cant both co-exist and provide one another with value! This I want it all and run it all thing his got going doesn’t work for me! It’s not why I got into this space

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"I want it all and run it all thing his got going doesn’t work for me! It’s not why I got into this space"

This is the issue in a nut-shell

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Agreed, I think his yet to realise his benefits can’t come at the expense of others it’s not a zero some game! This steem shit is a whole other beast

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whether the current witness oligarchy are the right way forward remains to be seen!

After the dust has settled on this affair, this is the next chapter...
For now though, the 'other issues' has more relevance.
For now.

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After the dust has settled on this affair, this is the next chapter...

Yeah! a fifth chapter at least. };)

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Only have a few Tron from an airdrop, got enough Cryptos to focus on already.

Posted via Steemleo

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I also have a few Tron from an airdrop and I bought some back in the day which I still have lol why I don’t know? It’s really not a focus of mine either!

I just thought it would be interesting with all this going on to take a look at their track record so far and compared to their competitors I’d side with them instead

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Wouldn't touch TRON with a barge pole.

And, aside from valid points you've raised, my main reason is very simple: I don't like CEOs/founders who purchase social followers. Those who do have nothing to bring to the table, zero inspiration and zero innovation. Otherwise it is very easy for interesting founders to gain organic reach.

Additionally, TRON is a xeroxing factory. If you can't buy it, copy paste it. That guarantees that they will never have the killer app which attracts users. At best an ecosystem of average copies.

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As a marketer myself I sure know how to massage the numbers and that’s what social is good for, yes he has 2 mil followers but the quality of those followers are shit! But it’s the way you’d sell it and if you can mobilize your echo chamber you created that’s where it becomes valuable

As far as I can tell he had a previous social media app that did really well which was a copy of another and I you know if it works once, smash that one trick pony to death

I don’t see innovation either I see copying ideas and throwing cash at it until it gets critical mass!

In a world where the top companies are all just empty shells these days this is exactly what I thought we would try to get away from and move to something where the community is the value

A lot of people talk the talk but aren’t able to or willing to walk this path! Because it’s not for the benefit of the individual it’s in the benefit of the collective!

He can hype Tron up all he wants I can’t see it doing much! They already seem like they stuck for ideas waiting for ETH next GitHub releaSes for POS and sharing and then copying all that shit

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I have never ran into something which required a TRON account. And I doubt I will any day soon.

Apparently only 24k daily unique addresses use the chain. Of which a majority are bots.

Nothing to truly write home about.

And I bet a large number of other active users are the shitdrop hunting crowd, because that's another constant about TRON: it's the eternal shitdrop chain.

!ENGAGE 30

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Oh yes you can see them on Twitter too I think Trons main holders are

ICO’rs during the boom time
super reps
AirDrop and bounty hunters
Dapp owners
Shillers

But the users are bots and sock puppet accounts! I would love to see how much was spent so far to have so few daily active users their CPA must be astronomical

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Grambling DAPPS sucks and will not bring the mainstream...

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What I find funny is freebitco.in has been around forever and is a centralized custodial service that has a faucet and offers the most popular coin in the world and while it does well in relative terms how did Tron think it was going to be the game changer

Sure if you got sport betting sites and other established betting companies to accept Tron I’d understand but getting your own users and asking them to use your coin is a big ask and it shows by the little activity

It won’t bring masses for sure, not now maybe gambling dapps in the far future when BTC and crypto is more of an acceptable payment method

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How do you stake your TRON to earn 3%?

Posted using Partiko Android

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You can stake it in Binance or a wallet like sasaneseed if you don’t want to go the setting up a node route

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So for staking you mainly get the SEED token?

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Nope, you get Tron added to your balance.

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and you can't stake through Tron Scan? I feel like I have been missing out. I'm staking on the Cardano Testnet and earning more Cardano and obviously I'm earning more EOS from REX and voting for proxies that pay back.....etc.

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I’m not so sure! How do you stake cardano and how many Cardano do you need to get started and what’s the current return?

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With Cardano you would have had to have coins in Detalus (sp?) wallet or that Yorgi wallet back in December when they did a snapshot and then you can setup the thing on the incentivized testnet and you join these staking pools.

I only had 6000 or so in the wallet at the time of the snapshot but I"m earning maybe 3 of them a day and I don't have to have my computer on or anything for it.

It is all delegated to the pool....etc.

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If we look at Trons so-called 800+ Dapps according to Dapp Rader almost all of the top dapps are gambling apps. interesting

"hard earned money" - Justin Sun

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I remember seeing an accelerator program from Tron foundation for gambling apps apparently they pretty easy to spin up on Tron and are just random number games from junior devs according to this post

Digging into Tron has me more worried than ever

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at least we have the power to transparently assess the situation. Imagine making analysis about the companies within the dotcom bubble in 2000....

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Agreed you would never know even if they were publicly traded! The old ways of building internet companies isn’t going to work in a open blockchain space and we need to realise new approaches will have to be taken

I feel that plenty of projects will fail and that’s good thing let capital flow to projects driving value!

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Excellent analysis and not surprising given what has transpired.
As I've also written re EOS, blockchains that are almost exclusively used for gambling are at risk of the whole blockchain being designated as an illegal gambling platform by authorities, especially of they are so centralised as Tron.

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Gaming and gambling is by no means bad but you’ve got to have a flag ship project that allows for more users to come in and then decide that’s what steemit is to steem it’s the flagship and leads you into things like actifit and Splinterlands Which all have their own communities and interests

If you pay attention to a certain niche like gambling you create echo chambers and barriers to entry to your project! Yes Tron now has Bittorrent and DLive but are they complimenting other projects on the chain the way steem does? I doubt it

I think with EOS and ETH they also focused on the B2B space and helping legacy centralized systems migrate and that’s where their actual value is coming from not yet the consumer facing dapps

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Hope Justin at least now understands that, he has bought something which has a lot of potential, to give him some clothes and act :)

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Yes it’s not a be all and end all with steem if he embraces some of the ideals we have here and committed to learning a diffent approach and an appreciation for talent not under your direct control he could turn Tron and steem into power house project

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Is the Tron blockchain code open source?

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Yes it is open source you can find the code in their GitHub

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Hmmm @chekohler ...

"... pulled in novice and ignorance investors who are yes men and build an echo chamber around the coin as a protective layer."

"In this way, it can shield itself from a lot of the negative opinions and obfuscate a lot of what has happened and will continue to happen with the project."

[emphasis added mine]

... I've never heard or seen anything like this. 😉

Seriously, thanks for taking the time to check into TRON and report back your impressions. It is helpful "to know your enemy" and there are certainly some disturbing bits in your post here. I don't know anything about TRON, so this is nice to have some perspective.

Written as the entire crypto space is taking another massive dump ...

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Yes my sentiments exactly if you see the implementations around Tron I think it’s safe to assume it would be similar if he gets a hold of steem! Regardless of the way things worked out so far and the fall out I think ideals would have clashed eventually in some form or another

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Thank you for this.
You gave me some insight as to why he seems so desperate to claim the Steem community as his own.

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It's a pleasure, was a learning experience for me too, didn't know much about the chain either. I mean if he had his way took it over ported it to Tron it would make the activity of Tron wallets much higher and have real humans doing something other than gambling

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Still not sure what Tron except hyped ETH.
It is good to know about Justin’s baby.
I think we are good and a swap look worst every second.

Posted via Steemleo

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I’m not for the swap at all, I don’t see why he can’t just overlay steemit onto Tron and have a dual rewards system like steem engine is doing with its tokens!

Like Splinterlands even allows you to connect a Tron wallet so I don’t see why they can’t do something similar

They can also help with file storage and reduce reliance on AWS!

I’m also learning more from all the feedback so let’s see where this rabbit hole goes

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Thanks for all this great info. I do not want Steem to be a part of anything that Tron has it's hands on.

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It’s a pleasure! Well I hope steem can influence Tron in the right direction should we continue to partner and we can still leverage lots of things in Tron but I don’t think it’s something we can’t live without if he doesn’t support us

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