What is Tron?
Tron (TRX), a blockchain-based project initiated in 2017, stood out for its unconventional approach. Unlike its contemporaries, Tron didn’t prioritize advancements in cryptography or network design. Instead, it adopted existing elements like decentralized applications (dApps), smart contracts, tokens, and delegated proof-of-stake consensus from established projects. While this lack of innovation drew criticism, many appreciated the focus on leveraging proven features, enabling a heightened emphasis on user experience and design.
Tron’s distinctive feature lay in its market strategy, which targeted the Asian market and heavily promoted its founder, Justin Sun. Bolstered by a fervent community of supporters, Tron gained traction with its futuristic appeal.
The mainstream spotlight intensified in 2018 when the Tron Foundation, a non-profit development entity associated with TRX, acquired BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer content sharing platform, further propelling the visibility and influence of Tron’s cryptocurrency, TRX.
How does Tron work?
TRX established the TRON Virtual Machine (TVM), a compact, Turing-complete virtual machine within its ecosystem. TVM aims to provide a tailored blockchain system that is effective, stable, practical, safe, and scalable. TVM-compatible tokens are implemented through smart contracts using the TRC-20 technical standard, ensuring full ERC-20 compliance.
Within TRX’s architecture, the storage, core, and application layers play crucial roles. The core layer comprises consensus, account management, and smart contracts modules. TRX employs a delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism to achieve consensus, allowing users to use their currencies to vote for delegates who, once elected, have decision-making authority over the network.
Twenty-seven super representatives (SRs) validate transactions and maintain the transaction history in the TRX ecosystem. These SRs are selected every six hours and rewarded with TRX coins for their services. TRX’s blockchain adds a new block every three seconds, with block producers receiving 32 TRX coins per block.
TRX utilizes an efficient instruction set and stack-based virtual machine, and smart contracts are written in Solidity and other advanced languages. Block Storage and State Storage form TRX’s distinctive distributed storage protocol, incorporating the concept of a graph database to cater to diverse real-world data storage needs.
Developers on Tron (TRX) can create various DApps and unique wallets, leveraging the platform’s ability to deploy and execute smart contracts. The diversity of utility applications achievable on TRX contributes to its uniqueness.
The Tron (TRX) network consists of three types of nodes: Witness Nodes, Full Nodes, and Solidity Nodes. SRs establish Witness Nodes responsible for proposing, voting on proposals, and producing blocks. Full Nodes broadcast APIs, transactions, and blocks, while Solidity Nodes sync blocks from other Full Nodes and provide indexable APIs.
