TRON is one of the largest blockchain-based operating systems in the world. It’s a blockchain-based DAPP (decentralized application) and smart contract platform developed to create a unique digital entertainment ecosystem.
Tron blockchain aims to remove the need of a middleman or intermediary between content providers and content consumers through the potential of the blockchain.
History
- March 2014: Raybo is established in Beijing. China’s first Internet technology company in the blockchain industry.
- July 2017: TRON Foundation is established in Singapore.
- August 2017: Tron’s ICO (Initial Coin Offering) campaign ran from August 3rd to August 24th. It raised $80 million USD in very less time.
- September 2017: TRON platform launch on 9th September. The project is being bolstered by some notable members of China’s business community as well as some blockchain industry enthusiasts.
- December 2017: TRON launches its open source protocol.
- March 2018: TRON launches TestNet and the Blockchain Explorer& Web Wallet on the 31st of March.
- April 2018: Letter to the TRON Community: On Super Representative Elections by Justin Sun.
- May 2018: TRON launches MainNet on the 31st of May. Odyssey 2.0 is a technical milestone for TRON.
- June 2018: TRON Independence Day on 25th of June. The Genesis block has been created with the consensus of TRON community.
How Tron Blockchain stacks up against its adversaries and the current status of the project:
- The Tron foundation emphasizes that its principles are fairness, transparency, and openness. It also follows the Berners-Lee-inspired principle of aiding people instead of raising profits for specific groups.
- The Tron Protocol is based on the blockchain operating system, developed especially for smart contracts and DApps along with a focus on social networking, entertainment, and gaming.
- Tron blockchain also offers a content sharing system and an online television platform. On the 24th of July 2018, Tron bought Bittorent for 126 million USD in cash. Tron founder Justin Sun says the deal makes his firm the “largest decentralized Internet ecosystem in the world.”
The underlying technology of Tron, what solutions it brings to the table and how the platform works.
The Technology behind Tron Blockchain
1. The Structure of Tron Platform
Tron supports smart contracts coded in Java/Solidity and comes equipped with an Contract ABI (Contract Application Binary Interface (ABI)). The ABI is the standard way to interact with contracts in the blockchain ecosystem, both from outside the blockchain and for contract-to-contract interaction. In a more simplified way, it’s an interface between the replication engine (blockchain) and the state machine (the DAPP).
TRON adopts a 3-layer architecture comprised of storage layer, core layer and application layer.
Storage Layer
The tech team of TRON designed a unique distributed storage protocol consisting of block storage and state storage.
The notion of a graph database was introduced into the design of the storage layer to better meet the need for diversified data storage in the real world.
Core Layer
Smart contract module, account management module and consensus module are three modules of the core layer. It’s TRON’s vision to base its functions on a stacked virtual machine and optimized instruction set.
In order to better serve the development of DApps, Java is designated as the language for smart contracts, which is to be further supplemented by other high-level programming languages.
In addition, innovations are made to TRON’s consensus on the basis of DPOS to fulfill its special needs.
Application Layer
Developers can utilize interfaces for the realization of diverse DApps and customized wallets.
The protocol of TRON adheres in entirety to Google Protobuf, intrinsically supporting multi-language extension.
2.The Ecosystem for Content Sharing
Tron’s Content Sharing Ecosystem BitTorrent Launches Native Token BTT Based On Tron Protocol. This is based on the TRON core values, that must always be followed.
- Users generating data will always have fundamental ownership of it. Also, anyone contributing to the Tron ecosystem is liable to get profits proportionally.
- All sort of contributors get the same value and time invested.
In a nutshell, if users using the Tron protocol or Bittorent generate new shareable content, they can directly send it to the Tron blockchain. The creator gets compensated in the form of BTT Tokens, the platform’s currency token. The BitTorrent ecosystem has about 100 million users.
Essentially, Tron aims to eliminate the big companies acting as middlemen (Google, YouTube, Spotify, Apple, etc.) who keep a slice of the content creators and providers’ rewards.
3. Tron Virtual Machine
TRON Virtual Machine (TVM) is a lightweight, Turing complete virtual machine developed for the TRON’s ecosystem. Its goal is to provide millions of global developers with a custom-built blockchain system that is efficient, convenient, stable, secure and scalable.
TVM connects seamlessly with the existing development ecosystem and supports DPos. TVM is initially compatible with the EVM environment so that instead of learning a new programming language, developers can develop, debug, and compile smart contracts in a Remix environment using Solidity and other languages. Once you’ve built and uploaded your smart contract to TRON’s mainnet, it will be executed on the TVM of the SR node to be isolated from external connections.
Furthermore, TVM employs the concept of Bandwidth. Different from the gas mechanism on Ethereum’s EVM, transaction operations or smart contracts on TVM are free, consuming no tokens. Technically, the total token holding does not restrict executable computation capacity on TVM.
The Official Crypto Currency
TRX is the Tron network’s currency. It can be earned, spent and used for several services or DAPPS. It was designed with performance in mind. TRX consistently handles 2,000 transactions per second, 24×7.
Similar to how the Ethereum network platform issues ERC-20 tokens for DApps, Tron generates Tron 20 tokens for its DApp partnerships. By allowing many different company coins to be traded on its protocol, Tron enables individual content publishers and users to communicate directly with each other without any hassle of converting one currency into other. TRX remains the medium of exchange.
UTXO Design
An unspent transaction output, better known as a UTXO, is an important concept in the world of blockchain. The Tron Blockchain platform is based on the UTXO-based trading model used by many other blockchains like Bitcoin or Ethereum. Following the concept, in a UTXO database, the validating nodes uses UTXO to assess whether transactions are valid or not. All inputs to a transaction get stored in the UTXO database. Based on above logic, we can see that UTXO is not represented as a data structure in the main chain, but the complete information it refers to is permanently stored in the block.
Consensus Method
Tron blockchain utilizes a Improved Consensus Mechanism based on DPOS.
Basic Rules of the Consensus Mechanism:
- Coin holders are to vote for nodes in accordance with their holding of coins with a ballot. And nodes are elected to become what are known as witnesses based on the result of the votes and certain other rules, which tries, to its utmost capacity, to strike a balance between speed of block production and the number of witnesses.
- Meanwhile, compensation will be made to unelected nodes, voters for both elected nodes and unelected nodes, in order to encourage them to run for future elections.
- Witnesses will produce valid blocks successively based on specific distribution rules and success to do so results in the highest reward.
- The vast majority of witnesses are chosen through votes and the rest are selected with an equal chance under a certain algorithm.
Tron’s currency TRX can be locked away (frozen) to gain Tron Power (TP) or Energy (TE). TP provides users with upward mobility in the Tron’s ecosystem through higher status and voting rights on the network. The longer a user holds (lock away) his TPs, the more he can earn. TE is used for the operation of Smart Contracts in virtual machines.
Tron’s Main Advantages
Data property rights
Tron allows it’s users to have the ownership rights of their data and content.
Transaction speed
Tron Blockchain is superior to Ethereum or Bitcoin when it comes to transaction speed, and significantly from its other rivals as well. TRX consistently handles 2,000 transactions per second, 24×7.
Ultra-low to no transaction fees
Another advantage of choosing Tron over other network protocols is that it charges nothing for transferring your currency from one account to another. Transaction fees on the Tron platform hit an all-time low of 0.1% at 7:00 UTC on 14th December 2018. It ranks Tron among the cheapest platforms for cryptocurrency traders to operate. Soon, however, traders will not have to pay anything to transact on the network as the developers behind the Tron Market are finalizing plans to scrap all transaction fees by Friday (21st December) 2018.
Popularity
The TRON (TRX) project remains one of the high-profile platforms with growing popularity. By many measures, TRON is among the leading crypto projects. Perhaps one of the best reasons why TRX is already quite famous in the cryptocurrency domain, is the merit to the buzz created by its owner, Justin Sun, and its huge community of blockchain enthusiasts. It’s listed on 43 cryptocurrency exchange platforms and supports seven fiat currency trading pairs. Not only this but has another 100 million potential users after the Bittorent aquisition
Powerful Extensibility
Provided Tron’s goals and design, it has the support of a wide array of DApps encompassing a wide range of different uses. Ethereum and EOS VM compatibility as well as the low Fees made it attractive to developers who ported their DAPPS on the Tron network.
Personal ICO
Tron allows its users to set out their ICO campaigns (token sales) by providing digital assets individually. Currently the creation of a new token does use 1024 TRX (one time fee). You can create both TRC10 and TRC20 tokens.
Java and Solidity language support
As mentioned earlier, Tron’s platform scripting is coded in JavaScript, which is a global language for the web. On the other hand, other platforms like Ethereum and EOS use Solidity, a complex language specifically used for programming. Regardless of what language you choose to write your contracts, the Tron Virtual machine (TVM) will be able to run the compiled code.
DApps
Ever since the Tron Virtual Machine (TVM) was activated in October of last year, the amount of smart contracts and DApps on the Tron (TRX) network has continued to increase at an exceptional pace. In the three months or so since the activation of the TVM, 3,856 smart contracts are now live on the network. These contracts have been triggered an amazing 134.2 Million times. The number of DApps on the Tron network is 110.