- TRON CEO Justin Sun seems to have paid to rig a self-made Twitter poll that was turning against him
- TRON received some 30,000 votes in its favor to swing a poll that pitted TRON against Ethereum
- Sun agreed last year to dial in the hype regarding his projects
Justin Sun has been accused of rigging his own Twitter vote to ensure that the results didn’t favor Ethereum over his own TRON project. TRON had been suffering badly in the straight head to head between the two projects until TRON mysteriously received tens of thousands of votes in its favor and overturned the poll, leading many to suggest that Sun had paid for the votes in order to avoid embarrassment.
TRON 4.0 vs. Ethereum 2.0! Which one is better😎
— Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) May 23, 2020
TRON Overturns 70%-30% Battering
Sun, who has regularly been at loggerheads with Ethereum and its founder Vitalik Buterin over which platform is superior, started the poll on Saturday, presuming that his TRON army would outvote the Ethereum followers. Things didn’t start well for the TRON man however, who suddenly found his project down 70%-30%, which, some believe, led him to take some drastic action:
It looks like Justin Sun bought Twitter votes to sway the poll.
Last night this poll had 20,000 votes with ETH 70%; TRON 30%.
8 hours later, with 40,000 total votes, TRON is now 60% and ETH is only 40%?? How did the sentiment reverse literally overnight?#boughtvotes
— Colin Talks Crypto (@ColinTCrypto) May 24, 2020
Short story. $990 later. @inversebrah @thecryptomonk @VitalikButerin pic.twitter.com/A6BDPQw7ZT
— Dustin slacking off at CoinFlip (@weidustin) May 24, 2020
Sun tweeted again following the sudden jump in poll numbers, seeking to make capital of the thousands of ‘votes’ that had just arrived in TRON’s favor:
Over 50k votes! #Ethereum developers please come and vote for it! @VitalikButerin https://t.co/8yjAk8f9X2
— Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) May 24, 2020
This only angered the crypto community more, with some making reference to the fact that Sun, as a US employer, was able to take receipt of $2 million in taxpayers’ money as part of a government coronavirus handout. Another Twitter user pointed out that 30,000 Twitter votes are available for $999, which is in the region of the number of votes that TRON suddenly received.
Pyrrhic Victory for Sun
Even if TRON ends up winning the vote it will be a pyrrhic victory, with both its and Sun’s reputations further sullied over the way it has seemingly been handled. There is of course no proof that Sun bought the votes, but the fact that the tide turned in TRON’s favor so suddenly and by such a huge margin is incredibly suspicious and not reflective of normal voting behavior.
It is small incidents like this that make Sun such an unpopular figure in the crypto industry, typified by cheap tricks purely to boast about high engagement numbers. These are no reflection on the quality or potential of TRON and only prove detrimental to the opinion of Sun and his work in the space.
Last year Sun agreed to dial down the hype he generates for his projects after his antics allegedly drew the attention of Chinese authorities, but it seems that this agreement doesn’t extend to unduly influencing his own polls.
