In today’s tech press, TRON, a big name in cryptocurrency is making waves announcing a brand-new project called “Tron Arcade.”
For many of us, the term “arcade” conjures up notions of dark, smoky rooms filled with gigantic old-school table games like Pac-Man and Galaga, and pinball machines flipping and bleeping in the corners.
Tron’s arcade is something different – today’s press release describes it as a “blockchain gaming fund” and says the goal is to attract and empower new developers to come in and create apps on TRX’s decentralized network. Whatever it is, it’s a $100 million project, as referenced in coverage at Cointelegraph.
TRX is a company that has made its bones on decentralization, blockchain buzz and yes, gamification. In pioneering the idea of decentralized apps or D-apps, Tron has made the news many times in the past few years – from the development of new digital gambling platforms to the acquisition of peer to peer fan program Bittorrent, TRX has changed what it means to think about how cryptocurrency is used in entertainment – and beyond.
“TRON protocol is the blockchain entertainment content ecosystem, in which TRX, TRON’s token, is circulated,” Tron’s founder, Justin Sun, told Total Prestige Magazine in a high-profile interview that helped to shed light on just what Tron is. “It’s native economic system enables an unprecedented one-on-one interaction between providers of digital entertainment content and ordinary users.”
Sun provided additional insight, talking about how Tron will eliminate the need to pay channel fees to platforms like Google Pay and Apple’s app store.
“With the strengths of social network and value network, TRON is committed to ecological prosperity,” Sun said. “In relation to any community and free market economy, an incentive system that fairly and reasonably reflects the contributions made by participants is fundamental.”
However, despite these explanations, to Tron’s critics, the company has also always been an enigma and built itself on rather shadowy and mysterious goals.
“The first thing I learned about Tron … is that it has nothing to do with Tron the movie – or the game – or anything related to Tron. So why is it called Tron?” Mark Fidelman wrote January 6 of this year at Bitcoinist. “I can’t figure it out either. And I am just as perplexed with their business model. Are they trying to be a decentralized social network? An entertainment hub? A content entertainment network? A Napster-like jukebox for digital content? A gaming platform?”
Then there were the rumors that Justin Sun himself dumped a whole bunch of TRX early this year, along with skepticism around the company’s overall model – an article in TrustNodes talks about Tron “coming under scrutiny for having no product.”
We’ll leave it to you to decide if Tron is all hat and no cattle, or if it’s new attempts to develop a more open source app platform is going to shake up the industry.
As for its current price, it’s nothing to write home about – after spiking in January, TRX has lost something like 80% of its value. Maybe if there’s any proof in the pudding, we’ll see a future Tron spike indicating that a large community of investors is back on board.
