What Is Tron (TRX)? – Beginner’s Guide
Tronix (TRX) is the cryptocurrency created by the Singapore-based non-profit Tron Foundation, a company aiming to become to center of a new entertainment and business platform. The fate of Tronix as a currency is almost completely dependent on the success of the entire TRON platform, which aims to provide an open, censorship free content platform like a less restrictive, decentralised version of Apple’s App Store or the Google Store.
The Basics of TRON
TRON ultimately aims to provide a platform for real-world businesses to build their own decentralised apps (DApps) and to be able to have their own branded ICOs unique to their business. This will use Tronix as the base currency making the exchange between ICOs easier. One of the first projects built using TRON is the recently released Tron Dogs, a platform very similar to Ethereum’s wildly successful CryptoKitties. Using this as an example, TRON plans to become an all-encompassing entertainment, gaming and business platform that is decentralised and gives both providers and consumers greater freedom than the current entertainment giants provide.
Roadmap
History
TRON, sometimes known as Tronix, is a relatively young coin, being created along with TRON in August 2017. It has received attention from major financial outlets like Forbes and already has connections with Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma. There has been some controversy around the company’s whitepaper, as claims surfaced that the English translations plagiarised other cryptocurrencies’ websites and whitepapers without properly referencing them. The founder of TRON explained that the English translation was done by volunteers not directly involved with the company and all versions of the whitepaper other than the Chinese original has been taken off TRON’s site. Their focus so far has been mainly in Asia, where most of their private investors are based, but it seems that there will be a more consistent English language output from the company in the near future.
Future
TRON has set out its plans for the next nine years which they have separated into six distinct phases, summarised below.
Exodus (August 2017 to December 2018): The current phase of TRON is based on simple file sharing. In its current form it is not utilising any blockchain technology. Justin Sun has also made it clear that there will be a currency burn at some point over this period but has not gone into detail yet about how this will happen.
Odyssey (January 2019 to June 2020): The heart of the Odyssey phase is prompting content creators and consumers to use the TRON platform and creating an online community. Rather that rewarding easily manipulated metrics like likes or views, there will be a tipping system in place where consumers can tip their favourite content creators. All tips at this stage will be made with Tronix.
Great Voyage (July 2020 to July 2021):The priority of Great Voyage will be setting up ICOs, where each company can have its unique branded tokens, which can be exchanged into TRON at any time. TRON has already made partnerships with notable companies like oBike and as more companies partner up with the TRON platform the prospect of individualised ICOs also becomes more appealing. There is a worry that the platform may come under a strain with widespread launches of ICOs much like Ethereum has and this is something the TRON team will have to navigate at this stage.
Apollo (August 2021 to March 2023): The ability to personalise tokens will now also be given to content providers as well as larger companies.
Star Trek (April 2023 to September 2025): Star Trek aims to build a decentralised gaming platform that will allow developers to freely build gaming platforms through TRON.
Eternity (September 2025 to September 2027): Eternity aims to allow the ability for developers to fund raise and monetise their projects based on community growth.
Team
TRON’s team is led by founder and CEO Justin Sun (Chinese name ‘Sun Yuchen’). Sun is an alumni of the extremely selective Hupan University (founded by Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma), and has already founded Peiwo, a Chinese app similar to Snapchat that has around 10 million users. Their CTO (Chief Technical Officer) is Lucien Chen, an expert who has worked for Tencent and Alibaba as well as countless other Internet-based companies. They are funded largely by private investors from Asia and this is their current area of focus but they plan on opening a San Francisco office shortly. The rest of its team is full of talented developers and partners with serious experience in major Chinese digital-based corporations.
Trading Information
TRON saw an explosion of popularity in early January of 2018 and was one of the most talked about coins, even reaching the 6th highest market cap value of all coins. Since then it lost a lot of that value and is a lot more reasonably priced. The TRON foundation has locked up 34.2 billion TRON tokens until January 2020 as a way to prove that TRON is aimed at the long term. This also leads many to believe that the lockup of the coins will lead to an increase in value of the cryptocurrency. Head over to our post on Cryptos Decoded to find out more.
How to Buy TRON (TRX)
The TRX coin is available on a huge range of exchanges but we’d recommend using Binance if you’re interested in investing in TRON. We recently reviewed Binance and thought that it was one of the best crypto to crypto exchanges available today. You can use Ethereum or Bitcoin to purchase TRON.
If you’re looking to buy Ethereum or Bitcoin we’d recommend Coinbase or Coinmama.
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How to Store TRON (TRX)
TRON is an ERC20 token so it can be stores on many wallets, including hardware wallets. We’d recommend using a Ledger Nano S, Trezor or KeepKey if you’re looking to keep your TRX tokens on a hardware wallet. If not, MyEtherWallet is another good option. Check out our guide to the Best Ethereum Wallets where we review wallets that are compatible with ERC20 tokens.
Competition
While there is no company attempting to do exactly what TRON has planned to do, there are parallels between some of its projects and other cryptocurrency businesses. An example is the ability to interact with content creators and tip them which is very similar to what reddcoin is attempting to achieve. TRON is currently in a good position as it seems to have cemented its place as one of the best cryptos around. However, as an entire platform TRON will also have major competition from Ethereum and other similar projects that will prove a lot more difficult to succeed over.
Our Opinion on TRON
Pros
- TRON is possibly the most ambitious of any cryptocurrency company. If it succeeds it has the potential to become as popular a platform as Facebook or Youtube. It truly has worldwide capabilities.
- The appeal of TRON lies not in its uniqueness, but in the varied things it is attempting to achieve. By creating multiple avenues for businesses, content creators and consumers its potential influence is massive.
- TRON has serious backing by Chinese tech giant Alibaba and its founder Jack Ma. It appears that TRON’s founder and CEO Justin Sun has close ties to the billionaire, and this would be a precious head start for any young company.
- TRON has already secured partnerships with oBike, a significant bike-sharing app. If it can continue to secure partnerships with big name companies it will provide TRON with stability and attention.
Cons
- Investing in a platform that is not in its completed form obviously carries a degree of risk. TRON depend on the popularity of the TRON platform and the success or failure of that platform is unclear at this early stage.
- The aforementioned plagiarism controversy has been a stumbling block for the young company. It seems unlikely to negatively affect them in the long term but it is something potential investors should remain aware of.
- The lack of English language material from the company itself may be off putting to English speaking users at this stage. Again, with the opening of their San Francisco office in the next year this should cease to be an issue, so if being able to get direct access to what is going on in the company is a priority it might be worth holding out a while.
- As previously mentioned, TRON, Tronix and any of the companies projected ideas are not particularly unique. This means that it will be faced with competition from many sides with many of its projects.
Conclusion
Investing in TRON is one of the most fascinating prospects in the cryptocurrency market today. While it is still a young company, it has the foundations to become a major player in the future of online entertainment, gaming and business. For anyone interesting in content creation of their own or just an interest in online content and gaming, it is an exciting investment opportunity. By investing in the company at this early stage users could well gain significant improvements on their investment if the company succeeds in becoming a major player in online content. The larger gains are also balanced with a higher risk factor, as it is unclear yet as to if TRON will succeed and if it does how far the success will take the company and its currency. We generally really like TRON and think an investment could be for anyone seriously interested in a potential long term investment in a company that could become the centre of a major shift in the online content landscape.