If you like to keep current with news from the cryptosphere, you’ll know a few things already. But if you don’t, there’s nothing to worry about, that’s why we’re here. For instance, you would know that Tron started life as a project running on Ethereum’s network and that it later developed its own main net which came online last May.
You would also know that the technical specifications for Tron’s new main net were so good that Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum’s founder and current leader) mocked them as fake promises. But as the new network went live, every single specification turned out to be true.
As that happened, many observers declared Tron as the new “Ethereum killer.” Let’s remember that blockchain technologies of the second and third generation (Ethereum and Tron, respectively, in this case) are not about a cryptocurrency only, but they are programmable platforms that can support the development and deployment of decentralized applications and smart contracts.
That niche has been dominated by Ethereum since it started, as it was the first project to offer that kind of features. But is Ethereum the prevailing project when it comes to dApps and smart contracts still? Or is Tron (along with EOS, Cardano, Stellar Lumens, and other third generation blockchains) finally killing it? Things seem to lean for the second option, let’s see why.
First of all, Ethereum has been plagued by problems. The transaction speeds are comparatively slow, and the gas price is kind of high. Ethereum users have been complaining about this for months, and Ethereum’s leadership hasn’t done much about it. An update to the blockchain (called the Constantinople hard fork) was supposed to appear last week, but it was defective, so it’s been postponed for next month.
If Ethereum’s problems were not enough, Justin Sun (Tron’s CEO and founder) came forward and invited Ethereum developers and users to move their apps to Tron’s platform. Some people mocked him. And some people took him at face value and are doing exactly that, like BitGuild.
BitGuild’s a decentralized gaming platform that develops several games currently available on Ethereum’s network. It claims to be designed to do away with fees, fraud, and regulations in a tokenized gaming marketplace. The fee-free bit is currently impossible on Ethereum, not to mention the network’s speeds limitations which is why BitGuild moved to Tron, as per Mr. Sun’s invitation, among other factors.
The announcement came this January 18th at Tron’s, niTROn summit at San Francisco and it was made by Jared Psigoda, BitGuild’s CEO. He gave several reasons for the company’s decision:
- Transaction speeds.
- Low fees (essentially none).
- The strong community at Tron.
- TRX holders are bullish about the token, and they actually use it.
- The Tron Foundation is supporting the move.
It’s hard to argue with any of those reasons. If only a couple were true, the case for making a move would still be solid.
So, it’s happening. Tron (and other blockchains) are indeed killing Ethereum. It’s not even the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization anymore (that’s Ripple’s XRP). EOS is still far from challenging Ethereum for the third place (it would still need 10 Billion USD), but the thing is that EOS is growing as Ethereum is shrinking so it could happen at some point during the year. And Tron has gone from 11th place a couple of months ago to 7th as we write this article.
The important thing is this: if EOS, Tron, and other blockchains can overcome Ethereum as the main network to deploy dApps, then it will be a matter of time to do the same regarding capitalization. We shall see.
Image courtesy of PixaBay.
