- TRON founder and CEO Justin Sun has hit back at a barrage of criticism from current and former employees
- Website The Verge spoke to 18 current and former TRON and BitTorrent employees who accuse Sun of a range of accusations, including making threats against employees
- Sun said that the claims of three ex-employees had “no merit”
TRON founder and CEO Justin Sun has claimed that there is “no merit” to a string of damaging accusations made by three former employees. Lucasz Juraszek, Richard Hall, and Cong Li were among 18 current and former employees of Sun’s TRON company and its subsidiaries interviewed by The Verge website, who were hoping to get an insight into the man who is reviled by so many within the cryptocurrency space. They duly got what they wanted, with the interviewees laying into Sun as a person and his management style, and laying into the merits of the TRON project.
Sun Accused of Dictator-like Actions
The Verge story focuses on Sun’s procurement of BitTorrent and the philosophical changes he brought to the company as well as the way he operated TRON itself. The picture they paint is not a pretty one, with accusations that he replaced existing company software with Chinese alternatives; instilled a tough new work regime that involved working twelve hours a day, six days a week; and hired a team to build copycats of popular dApps on the TRON platform before booting the originals off.
There are also very personal attacks on Sun, with claims that he behaved “like a spoilt brat”, gave a Reddit admin money to take down negative posts about TRON, and even threatened to kill the family of someone who questioned what would happen to TRON if the TRX token went to zero.
TRON Founder Lied About Kidney Stones
The subject of Sun’s lunch with Warren Buffett, which aroused suspicion at the time when it was called off due to Sun allegedly having kidney stones, was also alluded to in the piece. According to interviewees, Sun had been reprimanded by Chinese authorities for entering the competition, saying that Buffett was a “capitalist pig symbol” and was told he should not attend the lunch. As a result, the kidney stones lie was spread.
Sun Denies Some Claims
Sun posted a lengthy tweet thread Tuesday, most of which was spent eulogizing on what TRON and BitTorrent had achieved and how they operated in an honest and open manner. He eventually got round to the Verge piece, calling the accusations by Juraszek, Hall, and Li “false claims” that had “no merit”, although he didn’t address those made by the other 15 people interviewed.
A thread to anyone who cares to read
(1/12) I have devoted myself to being a responsible, global citizen throughout my entire life, spending significant portions of my personal and professional life to activities promoting universal values of respect, liberty & equality.
— Justin Sun🌞 (@justinsuntron) September 29, 2020
The cryptocurrency community has long regarded Sun as a chief snake oil salesman in a world full of them, so they will not be surprised by the volume and type of misdeeds he is accused of performing in order to spin the TRON narrative.
