TRON (TRX) has officially activated its mainnet. The self-proclaimed competitor of Ethereum will now be electing its Super Representatives.
‘Independence Day’
The tenth largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization celebrated its ‘independence day’ on June 25.
#TRON Independence Day live stream starts now, join us to be part of the free, decentralized internet. https://t.co/M5uzhyfjYf
— Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) June 25, 2018
TRON’s mainnet was officially launched on May 31. Odyssey 2.0, as it is dubbed, is intended to be a fully functional public blockchain which supports the creation of decentralized applications (dApps).
The goal of the TRON network is to become a formidable competitor to Ethereum. Its Odyssey release uses a Delegated Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm and relies on 27 block validators — dubbed Super Representatives (SRs) — to produce the blocks and verify transactions.
Furthermore, the official blog post noted that a massive coin burn will take place to celebrate the moment of independence:
TRON Foundation will conduct a burn of 1,000,000,000 TRX all at once, which is worth 50 million USD according to today’s market price.
Migration is Still in Process
The so-called ‘independence day’ celebrates the migration of TRON away from the Ethereum blockchain — the network which originally supported its ERC-20 compliant token. However, during the live event announcing Odyssey’s activation, Justin Sun explained that the migration process will be completed “in the next couple of days.”
Sun also noted that the project has managed to complete the token swap on one-third of the cryptocurrency exchanges supporting the migration and that users will be able to safely withdraw their tokens after the remaining exchanges follow suit. Regardless, he confirmed that the project will proceed with the election of Super Representatives — dubbed the “Genesis Phase.”
Big Days Ahead for TRON
As planned, the voting for SRs started on June 26 — a critical step for the project, as they play a major role in the network’s further functioning and development. As such, Sun calls it “the ultimate phase of an independent Tron.”
Sun also touched on how long the election could last:
Probably this election period will go five days or something, because lots of the [token holders] need time to get their mainnet tokens.
A total of 27 elected Super Representatives will be responsible for verifying transactions and producing blocks. The entire voting process, as well as information about the candidates, can be found here. Each TRX token constitutes a single vote and a super representative needs to receive at least 100 million votes to be elected.
Criticism Abounds
TRON has faced a lot of criticism while continually trying to market itself as a competitor of Ethereum — the blockchain responsible for its inception. In fact, Justin Sun and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin have repeatedly clashed on which network is superior, with Buterin openly accusing TRON of plagiarizing Ethereum’s whitepaper.
Furthermore, concerns are stemming from the code of the project’s recently activated mainnet. As Lucas Nuzzi, lead tech researcher puts it, the majority of Tron’s network codebase is based on the library of EthereumJ. However, it’s used without any attribution — while claiming originality.
Tron’s Delegated Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm is also criticized as antithetical to the ethos of decentralization — as a system where users don’t validate the transactions on their own but instead delegate representatives (Tron’s SRs) who take on these responsibilities. The algorithm was invented by Dan Larimer, CTO of BlockOne — the company behind EOS. EOS itself has faced a multitude of challenges ever since it launched, causing the community to question its entire nature.
PSA: If you think the #EOS launch was chaotic, wait until #TRON launches in a couple of days… I also happened to have reviewed the entire $TRX codebase.
My eyes hurt.They should rebrand to "TRON: the Frankenstein of crypto." Learn more 👇
— Lucas Nuzzi (@LucasNuzzi) June 19, 2018
Perhaps all of the above has taken its toll on the project. Despite the long-awaited news, the Tron TRX token is currently trading at [coin_price coin=”tron”].
Do you think TRON has what it takes to overrun Ethereum? Let us know in the comments below!
Images courtesy of Flickr, Shutterstock, Twitter.
