Dubbed the ‘Crypto Winter’, the current bear market has kept values suppressed throughout most of 2018. Despite this lowered overall market cap, major projects are continuing development – with TRON’s (TRX) creator Justin Sun barely registering the market downturn. Ever optimistic, he proclaimed a ‘bull market’ for TRON, based on the high activity levels of their native decentralized exchange.
Sun is well known as TRON’s hype-man and a public relations whirlwind. His continuous pursuit of partnerships left TRON in a surprisingly strong state given current market conditions. Further, his work dispelled much of the negative press that threatened to overwhelm the Tronix project during its early days.
Sticking to the Roadmap
The Tron Foundation released an aggressive roadmap in early 2018, all predicated on the release of their mainnet. Originally an ERC20 standard token, TRON found itself beset by negative press surrounding their lack of a functioning product. Despite this, Sun harnessed his supporters and kept positivity high – culminating in the successful release of the TRON blockchain. The migration from ERC20 to a proprietary token seems to have silenced the last of the critics.
Now, Tron is seeing a daily transaction volume that handily beats Ethereum’s own. As the first generation of crypto-games sees decreased action, TRON’s native TRONbet is picking up the slack. A simplistic betting game, TRONbet none-the-less sees a tremendous amount of traffic and a high level of user engagement. Unlike prior blockchain-based games, TRONbet is interactive in real time – and without the cumbersome collectible aspect.
Encouraging Developers to Migrate
Ethereum remains one of the hardest hit cryptocurrencies of 2018. From their peak at over $2,000 USD per coin, ETH is barely stabilized above $100. Justin Sun, leveraging this fact, encouraged developers to shift blockchains. His argument included the many features that Tron boasts over Ethereum – faster transactions and lower fees chief among them.
Ethereum easily ruled the smart contract dApp environment in the previous cryptocurrency boom. In fact, many of the current batch of altcoins depend on the Ethereum blockchain due to the prolific ERC20 standard. However, lowered values and the looming threat of ICOs selling off their stored ETH may make Ethereum an unattractive platform for the foreseeable future. If TRON can seize incoming projects, they may become a permanent fixture of the cryptocurrency industry.
Article By: Adam Stone
