What is TRON (TRX)?

TRON (TRX) is one of the most ambitious cryptocurrency projects in the crypto world, as it seeks to offer an economic and highly scalable platform for smart contracts, DApps and decentralized storage. 

LThe TRON platform (TRX), is a platform of blockchain which was born in 2018 with the aim of offering great scalability thanks to the fact that it uses the consensus protocol DPoS and, in addition, offer advanced capabilities of smart contracts that are widely compatible with Ethereum (ETH) and EVM, thanks to the fact that TRON derives these capabilities from this same technology.

In other words, this is a project that began practically as a technical improvement to Ethereum, but which, nevertheless, has evolved to include new technologies that underpin it, being valued by some as one of the great blockchain projects of the community. .

Origins of the TRON project (TRX)

Talking about the origins of TRON is talking about Justin Sun, a young man of Chinese nationality who has become one of the most controversial and well-known figures in the crypto world worldwide. Sun has been at the forefront of TRON development since 2017, at which time he created the well-known TRON Foundation in Singapore. This foundation would be in charge of "overseeing the development and ecosystem of this cryptocurrency." This is a task in which Sun has been at the forefront, since he has been the CEO of said foundation since its inception.

The creation of the TRON Foundation, however, was not without the controversy that often surrounds Sun. First, TRON Foundation decided to use a ICO to finance the development of cryptocurrency. This is how the ICO was held on September 1, 2017, in which 70 million dollars were captured for development. The sale meant the issuance of 100.000.000.000 TRX tokens, which would be delivered to their holders once the network was up and running. The controversy in all of this was that Sun achieved this shortly before China implemented a blockade of ICOs in their country, something for which they accuse Sun of influence management.

With the successful launch of its ICO, development began and it would be on June 24, 2018, when TRON's mainnet would finally go live with the successful mining of its first block.

Controversy looms over TRON

But, although the launch was applauded on the one hand by one part of the community, another was actively criticizing it and with compelling reasons: TRON at that time was only Ethereum with a new consensus protocol linked to the plagiarism of many other people's ideas that made themselves look like their own. In fact, the same Vitalik Buterin he criticized the project by saying that the white paper was a near-exact copy of the Ethereum white paper. The same did other figures, such as the creator of IPFS y Filecoin (FIL), Juan Benet, who also denounced on Twitter, the plagiarism on the part of TRON for the white paper of his project.

Were these allegations true or just a FUD attack on the new project? The real and correct answer is quickly found in an examination of the source code of the project in its early days. There you can see the same Ethereum ideas applied in the Java programming language, instead of Go (used in Ethereum officially).

The criticisms however did not matter much, as many cryptocurrency projects started exactly the same, especially copying things from Bitcoin (BTC). In addition, the project had its own merit for fulfilling what it promised at the beginning: a platform compatible with Ethereum, much faster and cheaper, all thanks to the use of DPoS.

Buying BitTorrent and its near future

On July 24, TRON would create another great controversy after the acquisition of the company BitTorrent. This company managed the development of this widely known P2P protocol. Sun's idea with the acquisition was to use TRON's technology, along with its implementation of IPFS, to create BTFS (BitTorrent File System), and be able to create a distributed storage system. The idea is very similar to the project Theta Network, where a huge network of decentralized nodes would be created linked to a blockchain platform to serve content (CDN) around the world.

In this way, TRON could become a network of DApps and monetizable content distribution that will have the native token TRX as its epicenter, along with new forms of decentralized content distribution. The idea however is still under development and due to its The roadmap, many of its main functions will be ready by the end of 2021.

TRON, a project full of development and innovation

Despite huge controversies, the project has shown that it is very actively developing and that many of its ideas are completely innovative. First, the layered structure of its operation ensures that they are very easy to develop, allowing TRON developers to design, test and release new functions without major complications.

Second, TRON is committed to the decentralization of the execution of its execution spaces. For example, TRON seeks to use BTFS as a decentralized storage system where DApps and other network functions can keep data in a secure and decentralized way, available to everyone at all times.

At the same time, developers are looking to create an integration and development system (API and SDK) that makes it easier for third parties to take advantage of the full potential of the network. This may sound easy, but it is not, especially considering that TRON looks for the following:

1. Have the power and capacity of Ethereum (DApps y Smart Contracts)
2. Great scalability (like that of EOS)
3. A decentralized storage system (such as Both and Filecoin)
4. And a functional content streaming network like BitTorrent

All this in the same system and under the same economic system where the TRX token is the key. The idea is so complex to develop that Justin Sun indicates that at least until 2025, TRON cannot be considered complete, and the roadmaps of his projects make this clear.

An API for the main programming languages

TRON currently has a wide variety of APIs available to develop applications that can use the potential of the TRON blockchain. In fact, the official support extends to APIs compatible with languages ​​like Java, Python, C ++, Scala and Go. This means that developers of applications in these languages ​​have native tools to program and create applications compatible with TRON. This is possible thanks to TRON's Application Layer or Application Layer, which is responsible for providing this powerful functionality.

Decentralized storage, the key to TRON's success

One of the keys to TRON's success is its BTFS decentralized storage system. BTFS or BitTorrent Filesystem, is a derivative of IPFS and its function is simple: serve as a storage network for the TRON network. Such storage can be used for everything from uploading files and data to DApps, to serving personal and private files for individuals and businesses.

BTFS is considered at this point as "the key to the success of TRON", a functionality so vital to the ecosystem, that if it does not work as it should, the project could well begin to lose relevance. In fact, TRON is currently actively developing this system and has been slightly behind other projects such as Sia, Filecoin and Theta Network, in this sense, since its opponents currently have much more complete and functional systems.

However, this year 2021 could radically change this, since the BTFS roadmap makes it clear that the main functions of this system will be in service by the end of the year. If so, TRON would be one of the most comprehensive decentralized storage projects out there in the blockchain ecosystem.

TVM, Smart Contracts and DPoS, the triad of scalability and extensibility

At first we commented that TRON was an "Ethereum with DPoS", and the reality could not be more true. TRON was built in order to compete directly with Ethereum, and to achieve this, the first thing it did was create a system that would allow the deployment of smart contracts in a very simple way. In this sense, TRON made a fork of the EVM and Solidity, and adapt them to the DPoS consensus protocol system of your node network. Outcome? It is possible to bring Ethereum smart contracts to TRON with minimal changes, and at the same time, enjoy a speed of execution and confirmation of transactions that Ethereum cannot reach at the moment.

The fork of the EVM It is known as TRON Virtual Machine (TVM) and is almost entirely compatible with Ethereum's EVM. For its part, Solidity in both Ethereum and TRON are identical. This allows a developer who knows the language to program for both networks.

One of the main functionalities of TVM and Solidity in TRON is the ability to create tokens in the same way as they can be created within Ethereum. In fact, TRON has its equivalents of the Ethereum token standards, ERC-20 y ERC-721 within your system (TRC-20, TRC-721 on TRON). This means that it is possible to create your own tokens and use them within the system, just as it happens within Ethereum.

This functionality is what has allowed TRON to currently have a broad ecosystem of DApps and tokens. For example, the stablecoin USDT has a TRC-20 token on the TRON network with which you can transfer USDT using this blockchain. Although the operation of TRC-20 is not cross-chain (compatible with other blockchains), the transfer within TRON is much cheaper than the one that would occur in Ethereum or Bitcoin for this stablecoin.

How does the TRON protocol work?

Now, beyond the aforementioned there are many other aspects that allow the operation of TRON as we know it, at this point we can highlight:

Account Model or Account Model

TRON uses an account model or account model to create its accounts within the system. This system is inherited from projects like Ethereum and EOS They use a very similar system. In TRON, the address or address, is the unique identifier of an account, and a private key signature is required to operate that account. An account has many attributes, including TRX and token balances, bandwidth, energy, and more. The transfer of TRX and tokens costs bandwidth, operations related to smart contracts cost energy. An account can apply to be a candidate for super representative and accept votes from other accounts.

To generate an account in TRON, a series of TRX tokens (TRC-10) must be transferred to an address enabled by the system. This in order to create an account enabled by a system smart contract. Once the account is enabled, the key pair is created ECDSA that will control your accessprivate key y public key) using the secp256k1 curve, the same that Bitcoin uses for its purses. The end result is an address beginning with the letter "T".

Management and Use of resources within the TRON network

An important part of how TRON works is its resource management system. In TRON, all accounts have at their disposal a series of resources such as CPU, Bandwidth, Storage and RAM. At this point, the system looks a lot like what we can see for example in EOS; where the same resource system is managed.

Thanks to this resource model, TRON makes highly efficient use of network resources. In addition, it also serves to control spam or misuse of the network.

Additionally, TRON has created the well-known Bandwidth and Energy Points, both used exclusively when interacting with smart contracts. Bandwidth points are nothing more than a series of points that you can use as an exchange to interact with smart contracts (sending or receiving information from the network). While Energy, are the points you can get for the CPU and Storage resources that you have available in your account.

Thus TRON creates a functioning structure in which:

1. CPU, Banking Width, Storage and RAM can be used for normal transactions of a TRX token within the network. In fact, transferring TRX tokens only consumes Bandwidth.
2. Bandwidth and Energy points are decisive when interacting with smart contracts within TRON.

Block generation and reward

As we mentioned, TRON works thanks to the DPoS (Delegated Proof of Stake) consensus protocol, a protocol designed for high speed and scalability, which works through staking and generates blocks, through the election of a series of representatives that generate the blocks. On TRON, these representatives are called “Super Representatives” (SR) and there are a total of 27 of them.

These SRs have the power to produce the blocks and verify the transactions that take place within the network. The SRs are elected by voting of the network participants every 6 hours. In addition to the SRs, there are “Super Partners” (SP) and their function is to monitor the work of the SRs to verify that their work is carried out correctly. In this way, the generation of blocks in TRON is in the hands of a small group of nodes that is renewed every 6 hours. Said nodes have a probability of being chosen to occupy a position (either SR or SP) tied to the amount of staking TRX tokens in their possession.

The system relies on a small generation core that is chosen from the group of candidate nodes for this task. This is vital because it avoids the centralization of power. Since any node that meets the selection criteria can participate. And, at the same time, a generation core is generated that fulfills the task of generating a new block every 3 seconds.

The rewards per block on the other hand are of the dynamic type. That is, the rewards vary according to a formulation and the amount of staking of the participating nodes. Thus the formulation that handles the rewards is:

Total Rewards = Vote Reward x brokerage ratio + Block Reward x brokerage ratio

The future of TRON

TRON is a network that many think is shaping up with a great future, even in the midst of its controversies, that is an undeniable reality. Currently the work of the TRON team is focused on making BTFS a stable tool. Reaching that goal will undoubtedly boost the development and value of the project in front of the entire community.

But the work doesn't end there. Currently TRON is also working on improving the security of its smart contracts and the scalability of its network. The first case is called TRONZ Shielded Smart Contracts. This implementation seeks to make operations with smart contracts totally private and secure, using technology ZK-snarks and Bulletproofs. These two are highly advanced cryptography technologies sourced from ZCash y Monero respectively. The idea is to make these two schemes included in TRON's smart contract transaction system. Thus, the user can choose how to perform the operations. In this way, if the user wants privacy, he can choose the TRONZ Shielded, and if he does not require it, he can use the normal smart contracts.

Another feature under construction within TRON is parachains, a concept it has taken from Polkadot. The idea is that blockchains can be created compatible with the TRON mainnet and thus enable a native cross-chain capability. The latter is a work that only began in May 2021. But, it has undoubtedly attracted attention within the TRON community who hope that these and other functions reach the network.

Ultimately, TRON is a project with a lot ahead of it, and it will surely continue to set milestones throughout its existence.

Links of interest