What Is TRON?

Created in 2017 by Justin Sun, head of the Singapore-based Tron Foundation, TRON is a decentralized smart-contract platform that aims to serve as an alternative to the Internet that is free of middlemen, has close-to-zero fees, offers high throughput and scalability, and is readily available to all Decentralized Applications (DApps) in the TRON ecosystem. TRON’s native currency is Tronix (TRX), and the cryptocurrency kicked off with a successful $70-million initial coin offering (ICO). The TRON protocol runs on a Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) model in which a consortium of Super Representatives (SR), voted in by TRX holders every 6 hours, maintain the transactions on the TRON blockchain. The DPoS model means that TRON cannot be mined, in contrast to Bitcoin, which relies on a Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm. Super Representatives receive block rewards that create new TRX as incentives for maintaining the integrity of the network. Tron is Ethereum-Virtual-Machine (EVM) compatible, meaning it has Turing-complete virtual-machine capabilities, but its bandwidth model is similar to that of EOS, making it less expensive and more seamless than Ethereum. There are currently two token standards that can be issued on Tron, namely TRC10 and TRC20, which can be easily swapped for TRX. The average block time for TRON is one minute. See below for a full selection of markets where you can trade TRX for other cryptocurrencies, US dollars, and other fiat currencies.