Talking about the hot-then-cold Tron (TRX) is one way to draw a strong reaction in the cryptoverse these days. Some people love the project, some people hate it. Some consider it an open scam, others think it has revolutionary potential.
Then there are those people in the space who are more or less neutral, who simply think Tron shot up the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization way too fast.
The same dynamic can be said about Tron's founder, Justin Sun. Regarded as a wunderkind visionary on the one hand and as a fraudster on the other, Sun and his branchild project are touchy subjects to say the least right now.
Now, while speculation and prematurity abound, it's hard to say with certainty that this or that has happened. What we can do is point out the “smoke” that's been generated in the community as of late.
Then, it'll be up to you to do your own research and see if there's any “fire” to the drama.
No product yet
This is a more general concern, and it could be alleged for now — fairly or unfairly — against other notable projects like Cardano (ADA).
But it's a reasonable and fundamental concern that's espoused by veteran cryptocurrency traders every time a fledgling product with no minimum viable project (MVP) shoots up in the markets.
Essentially, then, the concern is that investors are investing into a promise, for all intents and purposes. And while promises can work out well if they go through, we all know that promises are sometimes just that: promises, nothing else.
If Tron delivers on its milestones in the coming weeks, this concern will die down.
Justin Sun selling TRX?
One of the recent raging debates in the Tron community is whether or not founder Justin Sun has been cashing out billions of TRX tokens. The implication here being that Sun is tip-toeing his way out the back door, as it were, for an exit scam.
As the situation stands now, it is impossible to determine in a journalistic sense whether Sun is cashing out big time right now, short of standing over his shoulder and watching him make withdrawals.
What we do know thanks to the pseudo-anonymous nature of cryptocurrencies, though, is that there is a Tron wallet that has sent billions of TRX to exchanges. Make of that what you will.
Sun has maintained his innocence:
Image via Twitter
Accusations of plagiarism
Charges of plagiarism are a bit curious in a permissionless arena like the cryptoverse, but even still, some “offenses” are worse than others, and people are crying foul against Justin Sun for apparent instances of flagrant copying.
First came the allegations that the TRX whitepaper was heavily copied in parts from other crypto projects' whitepapers:
Wow! Absurd! TRON's "paper" is mostly copied from other projects, or is super basic p2p passed off as original. Zero references.
Archived that PDF in IPFS, in case they take it down: https://t.co/jv7EuSYenL pic.twitter.com/GbiL7MUrnc
— Juan Benet (@juanbenet) January 7, 2018
Still, others have disagreed:
https://twitter.com/DGLee15/status/950205357657243651
For his part, Sun chalked up the whitepaper issues to translation errors in translating the original Chinese into Spanish and English.
But whitepaper plagiarism wasn't the last of Tron's problems, as new accusations have risen suggesting the project forked lines of code from Ethereumj without attribution.
If true, copying other whitepapers flagrantly is more on the “scammy” end of the spectrum. Forking code from Ethereumj without permission is arguably fair game in a permissionless space. Distasteful, perhaps, but slightly less damning than whitepaper plagiarism.
1/2 My confidence in #TRON $TRX as a project is plummeting. Plagiarism is rife in China and the TRON team isn't doing much to help this perception.
1. White Paper plagiarism accusations.
2. Possible GPL violations in the source code that we know of https://t.co/LYeWDXjCvU— Philip Arthur Moore 🇻🇳🐷 (@cryptophilip) January 15, 2018
Featured Image via MOVIESTORE/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
