TRON is known as a highly ambitious project that seeks to revolutionize the digital entertainment industry by building a decentralized content sharing and entertainment platform.
Founded by Justin Sun, TRON was able to raise $70 million during its ICO in September 2017. Based on its whitepaper, the TRON code base was initially a fork of Ethereum and it made use of the Solidity smart contract language, which is Ethereum’s programming language.
After its main net in May 2018, it migrated to its unique network that is powered by the TRON (TRX) coin.
TRON Virtual Machine (TVM)
The TRON Virtual Machine (TVM) is an application environment or operating system that can emulate computer systems. It was built not only to make the TRON ecosystem bigger and better but also to test and execute Decentralized Applications (DApps).
There are two main benefits to having a virtual machine. First, for instance, if a programmer using a Windows computer needs to complete a project that should be made on a UNIX-based operating system, then he only needs to use the virtual machine to create a new application environment instead of buying a new computer.
Second, DApps developers can easily create smart contracts that operate on the TVM using programming languages that they are already familiar with instead of having to learn new programming languages every time they need to create a different application.
What’s more interesting about TVM is it is designed to be highly compatible with Ethereum’s Virtual Machine (EVM). Ethereum developers can easily port their DApps in Ethereum to TRON. However, even if TVM is compatible and highly similar to EVM, there are still two striking differences between them.
First, transactions on Ethereum are fuelled by gas which means that its users are being charged to make transactions. On the other hand, TRON has a concept known as “bandwidth” which makes smart contract transactions free.
Second, unlike EVM, TVM does not have scalability issues. This is because TVM can handle thousands of transactions per second.
TRON Developers
In January 2020, Ethereum officially announced its One Million Devs initiative that aims to build a larger Ethereum developer base. According to its website, Ethereum already has around 200,000 active developers and it aims to get at least 1 million active developers by the end of 2020.
If ever Ethereum happens to have at least 1 million active developers, this can still be considered as good news since there is a chance that some of them will eventually realize the advantages of the TRON ecosystem over the Ethereum ecosystem. Once they are ready to switch, they can easily port their Ethereum DApps to TRON.
TRON DApp Growth – How TRON Is Expected To Beat Ethereum
On March 28, 2020, Justin Sun announced the official release of Djed, a lending platform that utilizes Collateralized Debt Positions (CDP). The interest rate will be in the form of the stability fee. In order to mint USDJ, TRON users need to commit TRX collateral. Also, the governing token is dubbed as JED.
It’s important to note that TRON’s release of Djed represents its bold move to beat Ethereum’s decentralized finance (DeFi) apps. According to a recent report from DappReview, the total amount of transactions processed on Ethereum DApps in 2019 was around $12.8 billion. More than 90% of the transaction volume was from Ethereum DeFi Apps. On the other hand, TRON’s total transaction value was around $4.4 billion. Around $3.9 billion was processed through TRON casino DApps.
Through Djed, TRON is expected to get a share of the pie when it comes to DeFi transactions this 2020.
Moreover, Team Just, the developers of the viral Ethereum-based Fomo3D game, released a new DApp. Instead of launching it on Ethereum, they released it on TRON. According to them, TRON’s ecosystem can provide their DApp with better scalability and higher throughput.
The new game is called Just. Game. It’s a mind-blowing game that incorporates exciting ideas related to the Game Theory and economic incentives. Based on its slogan, it is like a “tech disguised as toys” game that makes use of autodecentric technology.
Lastly, as mentioned earlier, TRON is primarily being used for creating casino DApps such as TronBet, HyperSnakes, Rocket Game, TronVegas and TronTopia. In fact, around 432,000 TRON users use TRX for playing at crypto casinos. The top TRON casino sites are Wink, Bitcasino.io, 1xBit, 888TRON and FortuneJack. These casino sites are using TRON smart contracts so they can offer their players provably fair games as well as fast payments.
Why More DApp Developers Prefer TRON Over Ethereum
Many Ethereum developers are now taking advantage of TVM’s compatibility with EVM in order to port their Ethereum DApps to TRON.
One of the primary reasons why they are switching is because of TRON’s better scalability, higher throughput and more secure platform, which technically means more activities and profits for them.
On Ethereum, only 20 transactions per second can be completed. On TRON, there are 2,000 transactions that can be completed per second. This is the reason why many “Ethereum Killers” claim that Ethereum cannot be used for real-world applications. Also, based on CoinMetrics Network Data Chart for the month of March in 2019, Ethereum only had around 600,000 transactions per day while TRON was able to process around 2.5 million transactions daily. During the same month, Ethereum only had around 11,000 active users while TRON had around 70,000 active users.
Another reason is Ethereum’s gas fees. The gas price refers to the amount a user needs to pay per unit of gas/computing power. Deploying a contract on Ethereum has a minimum gas price of 32,000 gas plus around 200 gas per byte of the source code. A report from Hackernoon estimated that an Ethereum DApp developer needs to pay around 90 ETH per year to deploy his DApp that processes around 1 million transactions per year. This estimate excludes the running costs paid by its users. The annual cost can be significantly higher if a DApp processes a lot more transactions per year. Meanwhile, TRON charges zero transaction fees.
Clearly, TRON has a lot more to offer to DApp developers. It is thus not surprising that many are expecting it to dominate the DApp market a few years from now.