Tron is a blockchain platform that was founded in 2017 by Justin Sun. It aims to offer decentralized applications for the mass market with low fees and high scalability. Therefore, Tron is often directly compared with Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Tezos, and other blockchain platforms that are considered to be competitors who share the same goals and offer similar functionality.

Over the last 6 years, Tron has seen a lot of growth and despite the fact that it lost a large share of its market cap, the Tron blockchain still plays an important role in the Tether stablecoin ecosystem.

How does Tron work?

Unlike Ethereum, the Tron blockchain was designed with a proof of stake consensus from the very beginning. While this became a standard in the last two years or so, proof of work was more popular back when Tron was founded.

Consensus is reached through delegated proof of stake allowing TRX holders to freeze their assets to gain “Tron Power” and vote for so-called super representatives who are tasked to verify transactions and keep the network safe. In return, the super representatives receive a block reward and share it with the voters who supported them. Tron has a fairly high transaction throughput of roughly 2.000 transactions per second making the Tron blockchain one of the fastest on the market.

It also has smart contract capabilities and allows running multimedia and decentralized applications on top of its blockchain. Tron has achieved a couple of noteworthy partnerships in this context:

• The acquisition of BitTorrent which is incentivized using the BT token (BTT)
• The SUN network is offering decentralized applications through a sidechain
• A significant volume of the stablecoin USDT is issued on the Tron blockchain every year
• A partnership with Swisscom Blockchain
• Support of the Tron blockchain and TRC10 as well as TRC20 token standards in Samsung smartphones using Keystore and Samsung crypto wallets

The Tronix token

Tron also has a native token called Tronix which is commonly known under the exchange ticker TRX. Tronix can be staked and transferred like every other cryptocurrency. Unlike other blockchains, transactions on Tron are completely free of charge and involve no fees. Tronix most important use case is to incentivize Tron’s decentralized ecosystem of decentralized apps and smart contracts. It empowers users to:

• Reward content creators directly
• Start building dApps and get rewarded in return
• Rapid transactions: Tron is able to handle 2000 transactions per second. Ethereum is capable of handling 25 on-chain transactions per second

At the time of writing, there is a supply of over 101 billion TRX available on the market. Since Tron started as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain there was no mining or staking involved when it started. Instead, 40 billion TRX were sold in an ICO, and another 60 billion TRX were allocated between the Tron Foundation, a company owned by Justin Sun, and a round of private investors.

The Tron Foundation and Justin Sun

The Tron Foundation has the same job as similar institutions like the Ethereum Foundation or the Tezos Foundation. Its main purpose is to oversee the development of Tron and do anything in its power to strengthen the platform.

The Tron foundation was given 34 billion TRX from the start which allows it to operate freely and independently. The most notable figure in Tron’s history is Justin Sun. Sun became the public face of the Tron blockchain and became known for his marketing stunts on social media.

In 2019 he won an auction for a dinner with Warren Buffett and made it to the front page of major newspapers and magazines. In 2021 Sun announced that he would step down from his responsibilities at the Tron foundation and started a career as a diplomat. He is now the ambassador for Grenada at the WTO. According to a press release, he is still advocating crypto and blockchain technology in his new role.