The TRX Cryptocurrency Research Report
Summary
TRON is a newcomer to the Dapps market, building a blockchain based ecosystem in China. The Founder, Justin Sun, has previously created the startup Peiwo, a local app with payments integrated and wants to connect similar apps to the blockchain and move them to a decentralized system. At the current stage, TRON is not more than a concept and there has been much controversy around this cryptocurrency due to the way it’s branding and PR has been conducted thus far.
I. General
1. Supply
100,000,000,000 TRX
2. Market cap:
$4,7B // $0.0721
3. Marketcap class:
Very High
4. Industry:
DApps Platform
4. Type:
Platform
5. What Problem does it solve?
A blockchain based operating system that allows a DApps ecosystem to be built on top of it.
6. Competitors
The competitors of TRON are other DApps platforms such as Ethereum and EOS and to some degree, STEEM.
General Category Score
II. Online Presence
7. Domain name
The domain name is short and techy, and is has been so far been associated with TRON – the movie. A sci-fi movie about being trapped inside a video game.
8. Design
The first iteration of the website was in Chinese only and not professional at all. The website has recently been redesigned and looks clean, however it does contain glitches, bugs and style errors when you visit the deeper pagelinks.
9. Roadmap
Tron is supposed to finish development of core features and lauch the mainnet on the 31st of May. It will be an interesting day to see how the launch goes and if the project lives up to the hype.
10. Branding
Sounds futuristic, yet not original. It does not tell the people hearing it for the first time what the currency is about. They have re-branded 3 times so far (logo & website) and this does not create a serious impression.
11. Overall Impression
The first website implementation was in chinese-only and looked very amateurish. The website looks better, since it’s recent makeover, but it’s still glitchy. It is well-known in the crypto space, that re-branding is a “bullish” event. Speculators know that this drives the price up and capitalize on it. So does the company. It seems that the re-branding has been done not so much for the professional look, but to creat additional hype and capitalize on the price increase. Not a good impression overall.
Branding Score
III. Technicals
12. Whitepaper
As recent news has shown, the vague, and erroneous whitepaper of Tron has now been found to contain plagiarized content of the ethereum project.
Read more here: https://github.com/tronprotocol/java-tron/issues/25
13. Pre-mining
I assume a percentage of the coins are premined but I couldn’t find the exact numbers on this.
14. Mining
Tron cannot be mined.
Technicals Score
IV. Team
15. Collective
Not listed on the website or company LinkedIn profile.
16. Flags
There have been rumours about Justin Sun being involven in some sort of scam with his previous project Peiwo.
17. Developers
Not listed on the website or company LinkedIn profile.
18. Github
The code repository can be found in https://github.com/tronprotocol
19. Activity
Latest commit: 12 hours ago. (active)
Developers Score
V. Community
20. Bitcoin Talk thread
No Bitcointalk thread from the official team. There is a open thread by community members though. Link to BitcoinTalk thread on Tron
21. Facebook page
Present and active with 27K page likes.
Link to TRON Foundation facebook page
22. Twitter page
Most active on Twitter, 309K followers strong.
Link to TRON Twitter page
Justin Sun’s Twitter is even stronger with 450K followers.
23. Slack & Reddit channel
Slack channel not found.
Active thread on Reddit.
Link to Tronix Subreddit.
24. Community activity
The community is very active and follows every step their leader Justin Sun does. It appears that most investors are newcomers to the crypto space and don’t have a lot of experiece since they can be found making false statements and hyping up the project in the various forums.
Community Score
VI. Perception
25. Google search check
Mixed results, some show hype, some talk about scam.
26. Google sentiment
Mixed results, some show hype, some talk about scam.
27. Youtube sentiment
Many crypto influencers are against it, however some are bullish on the coin.
28. Community sentiment
Very bullish sentiment aon most social channels.
29. Criminal activity
No criminal activity found.
Sentiment Score
VII. Product
30. State
TRON is know for big announcements. The founder Justin Sun has repeatedly used Twitter to manipulate the markets by announcing “partenrships”, “updates” and “progress” almost every week. Usually the actual news was underwhelming, yet caused the speculators to react irrationaly and drive the price upwards. So far the coin has not realeased any real product that would support the price action.
31. Partnerships
There are many partnerships announced by Justin Sun, however none seem to be of real substance.
32. Positive news
Mainnet to be launched soon.
33. Negative news
Plagiarized whitepaper, false partnerships, overhyped tweets from founder.
Product Score
VIII. Exchange Listings
You can purchase TRON (TRX) on:
Which are very reputable and trustworthy exchanges. We recommend using binance for smaller exhcange fees, fast verification process and highly reliable interface.
Listing Score
VVI. Verdict
The TRON project seems to be an overhyped coin with no intrisic value or substance. I have followed the project since the ICO and the price action from 20 satoshi to 1500 satoshi was one of the strongest pumps I have seen so far. There are so many flags here: The plagiarized whitepaper, the obnoxious founder, the insane coin supply, the heavy social media promotion of “bullish news” which turn out to be false or insignificant. There was a time period where Justin Sun would tweet out “amazing partnership to be announced soon” every other week. It is this hype that causes newcomers to invest blindly and loose money in hopes of quick gains.
I believe the project is already severely overpriced at this point without any practical applications or other intrinsic value.
When a price relies on hype, it cannot be sustainable. I don’t think that TRON will be able to hold it’s position among the top 10 cryptocurrencies, or top 100 cryptocurrencies in the long-term once the social media hype quiets down.
Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see if the mainnet lauch is successful.
TRON Overall Score
Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. Investing in cryptocurrency assets is a risky, do not invest funds you are dependent on.
