- Tron censors POP Network, former Ethereum defector
- Does Tron portray a truly decentralized network?
An Ethereum project roaming to the Tron blockchain was identified and erased, emphasizing on the inconsistencies in Tron’s alleged mission of decentralization and censorship resistance. Back in February, POP Network, an enterprise creating better decentralized peer-to-peer media streaming, decided to move from Ethereum to Tron to take advantage of its swiftness.
This though is the type of switch the founder of Tron, Justin Sun had been urging for months. Previously in December 2018, in the wake of massive downsizing at Ethereum hub ConsenSys, Sun urged developers to migrate. His tweet went thus: “We would love to fund #Ethereum developers to migrate their works to #TRON. Super easy! Always #BUIDL! https://twitter.com/ninabreznik/st”
To aid this, the Tron Foundation, the organization behind the Tron blockchain also offered several grants and contests to lyre defectors. POP Network was among the companies that migrated then.
POP Network developed the BTTX Tron on Tronscan, the only Tron block explorer. The company was able to start instantly a crowd sale utilizing a built-in feature on Tronscan termed “Participate.” The POP Network also presented more information to Tronscan to become a “verified provider” before the sale. The sale lasted for 21 days and then these tokens disappeared abruptly.
Does Tron Portray a Truly Decentralized Network?
Commenting on this a developer with the username @PURPLE_DIGIT99 stated, “so all my $BTTX tokens disappeared, wow glad that I went all out on this project”
According to Bennett, the company contacted several support channels for Tronscan and did not get any response as to how or why their token disappeared. Something which according to them would not happen if Tron were well decentralized. Without any response as to what happened, the company went ahead to establish a second token, BITX, without using Tronscan. Instead, they created a direct smart contract to sell the token. Within hours of the released of the token, Rainberry Inc, BitTorrent’s parent company, threatened to sue them. Three days later, the token was mysteriously removed from Tronscan.
“At this point, we concluded the ban was likely purposeful,” said Bennett.
Tronscan is the project’s only block explorer, this means that any service that utilizes that set-up offered by the Tron Foundation would no longer show token including every Tron wallet. Due to this, the project “became impossible to further develop.”
TRON (TRX) Price Today – TRX / USD
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In a bid to resolve the issue, pop Network contacted executives at the top levels of Tron and BitTorrent including Justin Knoll, Roy Liu, and Jonathan Yu. POP Network alleges to have answered several technical questions about the project. Shortly after, Tron’s executives supposedly stopped answering to their team.
Max writes about blockchain projects and regulation with a special focus on United States and China. He joined Smarterum after years of writing for various media outlets.
