TRON (TRX)

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TRON
TypeContent monetization & distribution
Total supply100.000.000.000

From Messari (8-10-2020):

"TRON is a multi-purpose smart contract platform that enables the creation and deployment of decentralized applications."

Basics

History

"Tron is a decentralized entertainment-focused blockchain and content-sharing platform. In 2018, the project purchased file sharing service BitTorrent in order to expand its product. Tron is a long-term project with a set of 6 phases.

  1. Exodus: building the free platform for peer to peer distribution, storage, and content. Exodus’ goal is to provide a simple distributed file sharing built on something similar to IPFS.
  2. Odyssey: introducing financial incentives to encourage content creation. Odyssey is supposed to incentivize early adopters and foster the growth of a community consisting of content creators and consumers. Reimbursement for creation will be through a tipping scheme, instead of views and clicks - as those methods can be easily exploited through bots.
  3. Great Voyage: launching TRON-native ICO capability. Tron looks to allow content creators to offer a stake in a potential personal brand through individual ICOs or branded tokens.
  4. Apollo: enable content producers to issue personal tokens
  5. Star Trek: brings a decentralized gaming and forecasting platform.
  6. Eternity: aim for further decentralization of the gaming industry. This phase aims to bring the ability to fund-raise and monetize based on community growth.

Eventually, Tron’s core technology will be based on the adaptation of IPFS and Ethereum’s platform. In short, what Tron is trying to create is a huge mixture of what is already being done by other projects. Relatedly, Tron is criticized for plagiarism regarding its white paper. Founder Justin Sun tweeted that the translation was done by volunteers and excused it as carelessness on the part of translators.

It was initially an ERC20 token. On June 24th, 2018, Tron migrated from Ethereum protocol to TRON MainNet in a one-to-one swap. "

Audits & Exploits

  1. TRX burning contract audit by SlowMist
  2. Issuance contract audit by SlowMist
  3. Authorized contract audit by SlowMist
  4. PSM contract audit by SlowMist
  5. SlowMist SC audit (TRC20)
  6. SlowMist SC audit (ERC20)

Bugs/Hacks

"An attack on the TRON network caused the super representative responsible for block generation to cease activities. Justin Sun stated on Twitter that the attack lasted three hours and that no funds were lost."

Governance

"A total of 27 "super representatives" are responsible for validating blocks on the network. Super representatives are chosen through a voting system that allows users to vote based on the tokens that they hold."

TRON DAO

"In August, TRON announced Wintermute as the ninth whitelisted institution of the TRON DAO Reserve (TDR), which governs the overcollateralization of USDD. Wintermute is one of the largest crypto trading firms in the space and is an experienced market maker. The other TDR institutions are Alameda Research, Amber, Ankr, FalconX, Poloniex, Mirana, Multichain, and TPS Capital. These members are responsible for actively monitoring the stability of USDD and have the right to mint and burn USDD."

Treasury

"The Tron Foundation initially received over 34 billion TRX, burned 1 billion in June 2018, and locked up the rest until January 2020. The treasury is located in 1000 addresses that can be monitored on TronScan."

Token

 Launch

  • Tron completed a $70 million ICO in 2017, but later returned funds collected from Chinese investors after China banned the fundraising method.

Token allocation

  • From Messari (8-10-2020):

"Founders & Project 44.25% Investors 55.75%

100 billion TRX were initially issued. 15.75 billion TRX were allocated to private sale investors and 40 billion TRX were allocated to ICO investors. The Tron Foundation received over 34 billion TRX and Peiwo Huanle (Beijing) Technology Co, Justin Sun's company, received 10 billion TRX.

The Tron Foundation initially did not have any lock-up restrictions but locked up its entire holdings until January 01, 2020, when the Tron Mainnet launched on June 25, 2018. It also conducted a 1 billion TRX burn in order to celebrate the launch of the Mainnet. This was advertised as "Independence Day".

Utility

"Tronix, or TRX, is the native coin of the Tron ecosystem. It's used for transaction fees on the network, and can be staked in order to receive network rewards. It's also used for governance, with TRX holders able to vote on decisions about the network."

  • From Messari (8-10-2020):

"Tron intends to be used as market model rather than a cloud model. Tron expects TRX tokens to act as a mediator between consumers and content creators without the need for token exchanges."

Burns

  • TRON stands out as one of the few Layer 1 networks that has consistently remained deflationary, with an annualized inflation rate of -2.94% for the period from December 2019 through September 2024.
  • From a commissioned Messari report (25-4-2024):

"In Q1, the supply of TRX decreased from 88.2 billion to 87.7 billion. After annualizing this decrease in circulating supply, TRX has an annualized inflation rate of -2.6%. Annualized inflation was up QoQ, increasing 21% from -3.4%."

Token Details 

Stablecoins

  • Has a version of Tether running on it. For the last years (3-2023) it has been the chain with the largest amount of USDT issued. Plus has it's own JUST or USDJ stablecoin, which reportedly 'sold out in five minutes' (5-5-2020). This was the first token issued on Poloniex’s IEO platform LaunchBase.

USDD

  • From Llama Risks (14-3-2023):

"USDD is an over-collateralized stablecoin natively issued on the TRON blockchain. Initially launched as a copycat of UST, it pivoted to an over-collateralization model shortly after Terra’s crash.

Compared to other over-collateralized stablecoins, such as DAI, USDD is not permissionless or decentralized. The stablecoin can only enter circulation via a 5-of-7 multi-sig controlled by the seven whitelisted members of the Tron DAO Reserve (TDR). The TDR has full control over all smart contracts, custody of collateral and reserves, and minting of new USDD.

The circulating supply of USDD ($725M) hasn’t changed since early July 2022. The TRX that is backing the circulating USDD accounts for 83% of its value. However, the TDR has added reserves in BTC, USDT, and USDC to increase the backing. But all stablecoin reserves were recently emptied to defend the peg. Now, over two thirds of the collateral and reserves consists of Tron’s TRX, leaving the CR at around 147%. USDD has two stability mechanisms: A Peg Stability Module (PSM) and four Monetary Policy Instruments (MPI). However, the PSM has always remained empty (i.e no funds to trade against) and unutilized.

The USDD team repeatedly expresses false and misleading statements. For instance, it falsely claims to be “the first over-collateralized and decentralized stablecoin”. Another example is the designation of the so-called “BurnContract”, which in reality is just a multi-sig holding the TDR collateral."

"USDD is pegged 1:1 against the U.S. dollar, and users can swap between other stablecoins at a 1:1 ratio without any slippage using the Peg Stability Module, introduced in August. USDD is backed by approximately ~$38 billion in various fiat-backed stablecoins held in the TRON DAO Reserve."

As of 14-11-2022, USDD has a market cap of ~$700M, so it is highly backed.

"On Apr. 21, Sun released a blog post stating TRON DAO will be taking out $10B in collateral to launch an algorithmic stablecoin and offer a 30% annual percentage yield to investors. Set to launch on May 5, it’s called USDD. TRON has a strong track record in the stablecoin space. Since TRONs launch in 2017, it has processed more than $4T of USDT transactions.  TRON has since become the world’s largest stablecoin network, hosting more than $55B worth of financial assets.

USDD management will be entrusted to the TRON DAO Reserve and several major blockchain institutions, which have not been disclosed. The TRON DAO Reserve will provide custody service for the $10B of pledged collateral, use it as an early-stage reserve, keep the exchange rate of USDD stable, and enforce convertibility fully."

 Coin Distribution

Tech

"The TRON Virtual Machine (TVM) powers applications on the network and uses “Energy & Bandwidth” instead of gas, like its Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) counterpart. The TVM is EVM-compatible and effectively offers developers more affordable smart contract execution."

"The TRON Virtual Machine (TVM) powers applications on the network and uses “Energy” and “Bandwidth” instead of gas, like its Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) counterpart. Bandwidth is gas spent on transactions whereas Energy is gas spent on smart contract calls. Energy and Bandwidth can be acquired by staking TRX or by burning TRX to pay for the Energy/Bandwidth required to execute a smart contract call or transaction. The TVM is EVM-compatible."

Transaction Details

  • Capacity (TPS): 1000. From a commissioned Messari report (4-11-2022): "On the TRON network, every interaction counts as a transaction. Token transfers are transactions broken down by their corresponding token standards, such as TRX, TRC-10, TRC-20, and TRC-271. A transaction also occurs when a user stakes or unstakes their TRX tokens or when a smart contract is called or deployed. By staking tokens, users can vote on Super Representative candidates (i.e., validators), which also counts as a transaction."
  • Latency:

How it works

  • From a commissioned Messari report (4-11-2022):

"TRON is a public open-sourced blockchain network using a Delegated-Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) mechanism and the Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) consensus algorithm. TRON uses DPoS to introduce an election mechanism to determine who maintains the network. An election occurs every six hours, resulting in 27 Super Representatives who take turns producing blocks."

"It features a delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism, a system that offers an increase in performance while relinquishing true decentralization and censorship resistance.

Blocks are generated every 3 seconds. Block producers are rewarded 32 TRX per block and Nodes receive 16 TRX. As a result, the approximated daily inflation is 1.38 million TRX and the approximated yearly inflation is over 500 million TRX.

The Foundation initially stated that it will pay the node and block producer rewards until January 1, 2021. As such, the foundation declared that there will be no inflation on the TRON network before January 1, 2021, and the TRON Foundation will award all block rewards and candidate rewards prior to that date. Nevertheless, since the current rewards are not coming from the Foundation as of today, it is unclear if the 1 billion TRX burnt on June 25, 2018, were meant to pay for these rewards, or if the Tron Foundation will conduct other burns. Given the current rewards structure, the Foundation would need to burn an additional 250 million TRX to pay for block rewards until January 1, 2021.

Every 24 hours, the network grants every account a free pool of bandwidth that allows users to execute free transactions. In order to realize more transactions, users may freeze TRX to get additional bandwidth or decide to pay the fees in TRX. The fees paid directly in TRX are burned by the network.

Tron’s chain has a 3-tiered architecture: the storage layer, core layer, and application layer. The storage layer adopts a distributed protocol branched into block storage and state storage. Its underlying storage layer uses the graph database to manage data storage, which aims to manage data storage as Tron not only stores the node data but also inter-node connections. Its middle layer is composed of modules of smart contracts, account management, consensus and more. "

Fees

"The Resource Model aims to lower transaction fees and regulate network demand through transaction fees. Moreover, revenue is generated and burned when transaction fees are applied, thereby removing TRX from the network's circulating supply. Ultimately, the Resource Model allows for free transactions when users use the network within their means. On the other hand, when users demand more transactional power than what is available in acquired resources, they incur transaction fees. Collectively, this keeps transactions low on average but puts the protocol in a position to generate revenue when the demand is high from specific users. With greater demand, supply is burned, thereby putting upward pressure on the network value."

Upgrades

"On December 4, committee proposal No. 79 was approved. The results of the proposal changed network parameters and increased the amount of Energy required to execute smart contracts. The proposal suggests that the network should disincentivize the smart contract transactions that are of lower value to the network than others. They are disincentivized by making them more expensive to deploy. The effects of raising the required amount of Energy for smart contracts are described in more detail below.

The proposal also increased the TRX staking rate and burning volume. The increase in burn led to a deflation rate of 3.17%, which is relatively higher than historical rates."

  1. "March 2014: Raybo, a precursor to Tron, is founded.
  2. July 2017: The Tron Foundation is established in Singapore.
  3. December 2017: Tron launches its own open-source protocol.
  4. March 2018: Tron launches its testnet and its own web wallet.
  5. May 2018: Tron launches its mainnet.
  6. June 2018: Tron’s first genesis block is created.
  7. July 2018: The Tron Foundation acquires p2p file-sharing service BitTorrent.
  8. March 2019: Tron partners with Tether to issue the USDT stablecoin as a TRC-20 token.
  9. July 2021: The Tron Foundation restructures itself as the Tron DAO.
  10. November 2021: Tron launches a $1.1 billion fund to grow its ecosystem.
  11. December 2021: Justin Sun steps down as Tron CEO, handing control of the project over to the Tron DAO.
  12. May 2022: Tron announces the launch of its USDD stablecoin."
  • Tron 4.0, a major platform upgrade, is due on July 7. It will allow for the use of an advanced privacy feature called zk-SNARKs. In fact, a January investigation by CoinTelegraph revealed that the code being used in Tron 4.0 appears to be entirely copied from ZCash. 

Mining

  • From Messari (8-10-2020):

"Tronix (TRX) is the official name for the native Tron token. Miners earn TRX by providing data storage space to network users."

Staking

"All TRX holders can apply to be SR candidates. Any TRX holder can vote for SR candidates, among which the top 27 most-voted candidates will become SRs for the next epoch, while the 28th to 127th will become SR Partners.

SRs are responsible for producing blocks and packing transactions, but only SR Partners receive voting rewards without performing the aforementioned two tasks. All SR candidates, SR Partners, and SRs have the right to make proposals to modify parameters on the TRON network. At the end of Q3, there were over 350 SR candidates voting for 27 SRs in each epoch.

TRON utilizes an incentive model to encourage node participation and network expansion to ensure operation. SRs who complete block production tasks are rewarded with TRX. The model also specifies that SRs receive 16 TRX for every confirmed block they produce. With each block’s production, the TRON network will also reward 160 TRX to SRs and SR Partners who will share 160 TRX in proportion to the votes they get from the community. Any account can apply to become a Super Representative candidate by paying 9,999 TRX ($610 as of 9/30) to join the SR election."

  • From Messari (8-10-2020):

"A total of 27 "super representatives" are responsible for validating blocks on the network. Super representatives are chosen through a voting system that allows users to vote based on the tokens that they hold."

Staking stats

"At the end of Q1, over 412 SR candidates (up from 400 in Q4’23) received votes. The growing number of SR candidates should challenge the voting population to distribute votes to new candidates. Additionally, no singular entity received more than 10% of all votes.

As of Q1 end, 7,386 TRON nodes were distributed across 79 different geographic locations around the globe, with the highest concentration in Europe (~39%)."

"At the end of Q4, over 380 SR candidates (up from ~350 in Q3) voted for 27 SRs in each six-hour epoch. The December 31 snapshot of the top 27 SRs and their respective vote power reveals that the above 27 SRs are commonly elected to participate in block production.

There may be concerns about these 27 SRs consistently participating in securing the network. However, the growing number of SR candidates should challenge the voting population to distribute votes to a broader range of candidates."

Other Details 

Oracle Method

Privacy Method

"zk-SNARKs are the core privacy technology of the ZCash blockchain. The privacy feature ensures that a transaction can be made without revealing information such as the amount of money being sent. In fact, a January investigation by CoinTelegraph revealed that the code being used in Tron 4.0 appears to be entirely copied from ZCash. 

Unlike ZCash, Tron’s version will not make transactions using its TRX cryptocurrency anonymously. Instead, developers can adopt a shielded transaction feature by implementing the smart contract, according to the TRONZ announcement. It added that compliance with global regulations and policies are the main reasons privacy is a stand-alone feature."

Compliance

Their Other Projects 

"We are creating the same kind of DeFi ecosystem as Ethereum," Sun said. "All the Ethereum network products, you can see a same version of Tron products. For example, the MakerDAO on Tron is called JustStable, created by the JUST team. And UniSwap is called JustSwap. Sun pointed to direct Tron counterparts for YFI, Aave, and Compound, three DeFi protocols that leverage the Ethereum blockchain."

Bitcoin L2

"On February 15, Justin Sun announced that TRON will be developing a Bitcoin Layer-2 solution."

JustSwap

"1inch.exchange, is integrating with Tron's JustSwap. The new partnership will also see 1inch.exchange’s Mooniswap merge with Tron's blockchain."

Roadmap

  • Can be found [Insert link here]. From a commissioned Messari report (4-11-2022):

"TRON doesn’t currently feature an official roadmap; however, some of its documentation suggests the ecosystem’s original 10-year roadmap has three key integrations on the horizon: Apollo, Star Trek, and Eternity. TRON continues to build onto the current Great Voyage network implementation and, with time, will work towards the three implementations."

Revenue

  • From Onchain Times (16-7-2024):

"The second biggest revenue generator in Web3 is the L1 Tron network, raking in ~$852M in revenues YTD according to TokenTerminal."

"Revenue in USD was at an all-time high in Q1 at $128.1 million."

"Q4 revenue in USD was up 14% QoQ from $105 million to $119 million. As for all of 2023, the only networks that had higher revenues than TRON were Ethereum and Bitcoin."

"While average transaction fees were flat QoQ, total revenue increased by 25% due to the high volume of user activity during the quarter. A substantial amount of TRX was burned vs. generated during Q4 2022. TRON burned ~332 million out of its ~92 billion in total supply (~0.36% supply burned) in December. For perspective, TRON burned ~240 million TRX in October. TRON's daily revenue trended upward and surpassed BNB Chain by the end of Q4."

Usage

"USDT on TRON reached over $50 billion in Q1, finishing the quarter at $52.1 billion (up 12% QoQ from $46.3 billion). Approximately 53% of all USDT in circulation is on TRON."

  • TRON’s most prominent protocols by TVL, JustLend, JustStables, and SUN continue to represent over 99% of TVL on TRON (1-2024).
  • From a commissioned Messari report (4-11-2022):
  1. "TRON network activity reached a refreshed foundational user base after the launch of USDD in May.
  2. Since May, the total amounts of stake and engaged stake have increased drastically.
  3. The 61% growth in TVL was driven by three unique wallets depositing approximately $1.6 billion in various assets.

Smart contract triggers were down ~14%, indicating a reduction in application users. Transaction activity declined for many of TRON’s DeFi protocols, coinciding with fewer triggered smart contracts.

Since activating an account requires at least one transfer, a portion of transfer activity results from account activation. During Q3, ~3.9 million transactions per day on average were TRX and TRC-10 transfers. This amount represents about 73% of total transactions on the network. Given the average number of activated accounts of 140,000 per day, about 3% of token transfers came from account activations. Existing users generated the other 97%."

"A report by blockchain data analysis site DappRadar titled “JustSwap on Tron Attracts More Users Than QuickSwap” says that in the 30-day period ended on July 19, decentralized exchange (DEX) JustSwap – Tron’s version of Uniswap on Ethereum – gained about 200,000 unique users, an increase of more than 200% compared with a 1% increase in the same time period on QuickSwap, the most popular DEX on Polygon."

"The growth in Tron is dominated by dApps in the “high-risk” category, including gambling applications.  Nonetheless, Tron’s DeFi and DEX ecosystem grew significantly. However, data has revealed signs of wash trading on that front as well."

"The research sees trouble lurking from TRON, which saw active developers decline more than 50% compared to a year ago, and 96% fewer code updates."

Projects that use or built on it

  • As of 20202 Q1, it has 727 Dapps, 342 of which are active, 66 were new and about 236.95K active users.
  • Peiwo, a Snapchat-like app that allows users to send 10-second voice recordings, runs on the Tron blockchain.

"Tron has quietly grown into one of the most successful dApp networks to date. Admittedly, there’s a preponderance of gambling dapps, with a few exchanges thrown in for good measure..."

"Another minor success story for Tron is that its sub-tokens have gained some traction, in contrast to EOS. Most notably, the Wink token, which IEO’d on Binance last month, has done well, and cemented Tron’s reputation as the gambler’s chain of choice. Tron’s also been making progress in other areas, such as with the Sun network, a sidechain for launching dapps that provides all the functionality of the mainchain but with lower resource costs."

"Tron founder Justin Sun launched a dollar-pegged stablecoin backed by TRX tokens called Djed, in a system that closely resembles MakerDAO’s Dai. Two data dashboards for Djed looks almost exactly like MakerDAO’s portal and Mike McDonald’s mkr.tools."

"Justin Sun paid $500,000 for the developers of popular Ethereum game Fomo3D to build a new version of the game on the Tron blockchain, according to the contract seen by Decrypt. But the game never really took off, and the developers have disappeared."

Migrations away from Tron

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • During the FTX crash in November 2022, Tron DAO bailed out all FTX Tron users, seemingly without a DAO vote, but still, helping its users.

Cons

  • Had loads of plagiarization in it’s whitepaper, mainly from filecoin, ifps and ethereum.
  • Justin Sun, the founder, has repeatedly had bad press due to questionable decisions. One example was posting a 'developer guide' for Tron which was actually 'just a list of where to buy Tron'. More about it in this post. Sun deleted the 'guide' after being confronted about it.
  • Might have pumped it's own token with Poloniex funds.
  • When KuCoin got hacked (28-9-2020), some TRON tokens were frozen by 'entities'. This hints to centralized powers.

Competition

"Tron’s scalability comes at a cost, given that the platform is based on a delegated proof-of-stake consensus. In 2019, co-founder Lucien Chen announced he was leaving the project due to the “pseudo-decentralized” nature of Tron, which he believed was counterproductive to the company’s mission to “decentralize the web.” In contrast, Ethereum 2.0 will launch with over 16,000 validators on the Beacon Chain, according to ConsenSys."

Team, Funding, Partners

  • Sun, Justin; founder & ex-CEO. Became the WTO ambassador for Grenada (17-12-2021).
  • Justin got into the news with fake twitter followers: "20,000 of Tron's Justin Sun's 50,000 new Twitter followers are likely fake, according to researcher Geoff Golberg; analysis reveals almost half of the new followers are extremely similar and uniform in consistency, pointing towards software creation; leading signs include all the accounts following few people, were just created, and have few tweets"
  • Lucien Chen; ex-co founder who left (2019) due to the “pseudo-decentralized” nature of Tron.

Funding

Has done a couple of acquisitions

BitTorrent

“Among those departed were at least two individuals serving in leadership positions, the sources indicated, performing key roles such as general manager and head of marketing.

However, other senior-level employees, including the company's chief executive, chief financial officer, chief product officer and chief revenue officer, are unable to leave the company due to 18-month lock-in agreements.

The news comes just two months after Justin Sun purchased the San Francisco-based company for $120 million in cashthrough Rainberry Acquisition, Inc., a company registered to him alone according to publicly available documents. Sun, a former Ripple representative, is best known for founding the Tron project in 2017, which aims to decentralize the internet and boasts controversial miner Bitmain as a backer.”

Dlive

Steemit.Inc

“Steemit Inc., the largest decentralized blockchain-based social media and blogging platform, announced a strategic partnership with TRON Foundation,” the release states. “TRON and Steemit’s development teams will immediately begin working together to bring Steemit and other Steem blockchain-based DApps to TRON blockchain.

The Ask Me Anything video finds Tron founder Justin Sun in discussion with Scott, elaborating on the details and implications of the deal. In explaining why he sold the company, Scott stated he is “moving on for personal reasons” and that “there’s a couple other companies that I’m working on behind the scenes privately.” This is notable since one of the common criticisms of Steemit historically has been the project-hopping of leaders, with Bitshares creator Dan Larimer, who helped Scott create Steemit, leaving the project in 2017 to work on EOS development.

One user commented: “the community is very worried about what the next steps are and there is a lot of talk about a fork away from Tron within the Steem community as many members presently see this as a hostile take over by Tron and not a mutually beneficial partnership.”

Token Swap

"I don’t think we have a plan for immediately like token swap, so I think we will keep both steem and the tron tokens separate and run separately … there is no token swap for right now … I just want to talk with the team and found out the best solution to integrate eventually for steem, Steemit, and Tron."

However the official press release is clear: “Together, TRON Foundation and Steemit Inc. will look to create further value for their users and to augment their advancements in decentralized technologies,” it states, “including moving old STEEM token to a new TRON based STEEM token.”

Poloniex

Partners

  • Has a partnership with Blockfolio
  • Tron has confirmed it will be “collaborating” with the Japanese government to prevent gambling dapps from being accessible within the Pacific island territory. The Tron Foundation has encouraged blocking gambling dapp users with Japanese IP addresses.
  • Is partners (20-4-2020) with Consensus Lab.
  • Partners with Gravity (13-8-2020)
  • Reef Finance partnered with Tron to "help build its DeFi ecosystem." (18-2-2021)

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