TRON’s (TRX) mainnet has launched today and its price dropped by approximately 4.5 percent in the last 24 hours, according to data from CryptoCompare. In the past 7 days, Tron’s TRX token has dropped 14% percent, which is the sharpest decline out of the top 15 cryptocurrencies. While some might attribute the drop to the bearish trend cryptos are going through, there may be other factors.
Odyssey 2.0, Tron’s mainnet, launched at 12 am UTC today and the process of transferring over $4 billion worth of TRX to its mainnet has begun. At press time, the TRON team led by its founder Justin Sun is focusing on appointing “super representatives.” This will reportedly be done by holding elections, and it’s expected to be completed in about a month.
From his hyperactive Twitter account, Justin Sun tweeted:
Thanks @officialmcafee. I believe the TRON Super Representative Election on June 26 will become a gold standard for blockchain governance as one of the few blockchain communities with a legitimate governance system. #TRON #TRX $TRX #TRONSR https://t.co/QuwOm77Wi8
— Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) May 31, 2018
Tall Claims
TRON’s team claims that Odyssey 2.0 will be able to process 10,000 TPS (transactions per second), which would be a lot faster than the current 25 TPS on the Ethereum blockchain.
Additionally, there will be no transaction fees, coins will be burned regularly in order to drive up the price, and there’ll be a $1 billion reward pool for developers who build apps on the platform or contribute to its development. At present, these appear to be tall claims considering the project is in its preliminary stages.
While it would seemingly be difficult to compete with the Ethereum because of its network effect, Justin Sun remains confident as he recently stated:
“Our team maintains a high standard of excellence as we head towards becoming a mainstream public blockchain. The move of the TRON Protocol to MainNet makes it easier for developers to break away from Ethereum and opens up new doors towards better scaling, commercialization and express lanes needed for global dApp development.”
Trading At a Small Premium
Despite these comments, the platform’s TRX token continues to depreciate. In fact, its price could continue to decline as the token’s trading volume failed to reach expected levels. At present, the TRX token is trading at a very small premium on UPbit at around $0.06 against the South Korean won.
Although Odyssey 2.0 went live, many crypto watchers weren’t too excited about it. However, there’s a general expectation among cryptocurrency devotees that TRON’s numerous partnerships with giant companies such as Chinese billionaire Jack Ma’s Alibaba will likely continue.
Meanwhile, the platform’s critics argue that its mainnet’s launch should be taken, as they believe that its network cannot be secure until trustworthy “super representatives” are elected. The super reps would be expected to secure consensus on TRON’s blockchain while also making sure that the current ERC-20 based TRX tokens are officially swapped for native TRX tokens.
It’s worth noting that anyone who holds TRX tokens can use cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance and Bitfinex to handle the swap, although trusting third parties isn’t the optimal solution. The deadline for transferring the tokens has been set for June 24, 2018.
