On January 8th, Justin Sun – Tron Founder – announced that BitTorrent was going to launch its TRC-10 token on the Tron network with the help of Binance Launchpad. However, an ex-BitTorrent employee doesn’t believe that the Tron network can handle the transaction volume that BitTorrent alone can deliver. To this extent, Simon Morris – ex-BitTorrent Chief Strategy Officer – believes that Sun will use a different network and paint it as a “Lightning Network for Tron”. If Morris is correct, this could be the biggest Tron scandal to date and something that even marketing guru Justin Sun could struggle to talk his way out of.
The TPS Issue
One of the biggest issues facing all decentralized blockchains is the transactions per second (TPS) issue. The more decentralized a network is, the longer it takes to confirm transactions. In this sense, if Tron is truly as decentralized as it claims, then there is a good chance its TPS isn’t actually that high. Currently, Tron claims around 2,000 TPS, which should be just enough to handle BitTorrent’s transactions alone. Once you add in all the other dApps that are allegedly flocking to Tron, it makes for one huge traffic jam.
BitTorrent will “Melt Tron”
Speaking in an interview with BREAKER, Morris said that BitTorrent had been conceptualizing using blockchain technology to automate download queues and tokenizing the platform could improve speed by up to 40%. In order to do this, the network would reward fast connections with BitTorrent Tokens (BTT) which would help the network get even faster. Yet, Morris claims that Tron cannot handle the vast amount of transactions required and is quoted as saying,
It was very clear when I was [at BitTorrent] that there was no way the transaction capacity of Tron would [work],” says Morris, sounding more bemused than angry. “The transactional capacity we [were] looking at was needing hundreds of transactions a second just to get started. It’s simply not there. You hear all the bullshit out there, oh, this does 10,000 transactions a second. It’s all crap. We were going to melt Tron. Literally destroy it.
Tron Hitting Back at an “Angry Former Employee”
Tron immediately hit back at Morris’ claims, saying that he was merely a disgruntled former employee. A statement from Tron read,
Morris appears to have little insight into BitTorrent operational plans since his departure. Actions and execution will prove louder than the words of a disgruntled former employee.
This sounds like a typical Tron response and doesn’t address the accusations directly – could this be another Tron scandal that Justin Sun is looking to sweep under the rug?
A Possible Repeat of the White Paper Scandal
Anyone who has been in the blockchain space since before Tron was launched will undoubtedly remember the scandal of the Tron white paper. It was full of plagiarism from sections of other project’s white papers, including huge sections from IPFS and FileCoin. Rather than putting his hand up and admitting to being “young” and “scrappy”, Justin Sun removed the white paper completely and refused to acknowledge its existence. This same dangerous thinking and attitude could lead many avid Tron supporters to carry on buying into Sun’s marketing machine, when in fact the network is vastly inferior.
The news of BTT launching on Tron’s network with a TRC-10 token helped the price of Tron fly high, even during a mini-flash crash of the wider crypto markets. It’s very clear Justin Sun is the master of marketing, but is Tron actually capable of hosting the TPS of BitTorrent? This is make or break for Tron, and it can’t be seen using any third-party networks to help make it work. If Tron messes up here, it could be game over for Justin Sun and his marketing masterclass.
