Lucien Chen, co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of blockchain firm TRON (TRX), has announced that he will be leaving the firm.
Chen announced his resignation from the firm in a Medium post titled “Why should I rebuild a new TRON?”. According to the post, Chen decided to leave the company because the network itself has somewhat deviated from the original purpose.
Everything is different
His post reads, “Because of the irreconcilable contradiction between us, TRON is no longer the original TRON. The reason for leaving is very simple. As a technical man, I feel very sad that the TRON has departed from the faith of ‘decentralize the web’.”
While Chen’s period with the company has seen its currency grow into one of the largest in the world by market capitalization (per data from CoinMarketCap). However, notwithstanding, Chen states that he needs to leave because the platform has become excessively centralized.
Centralization problem
Chen pointed out the fact that there’s a centralized voting problem in TRON’s Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPOS) consensus and Super Representative node. He highlighted that there are some nodes which have more votes, even though their voter counts are significantly lower. He added, “. Therefore, the vote of ordinary retail investors has completely fallen. The total number of TRX in TRON is 100 billion, while the total number of votes for the super representatives is just less than 8 billion.”
He also repeatedly highlighted that TRON’s relation with the Internet has changed, as the company itself seemed to have deviated from the purpose of the blockchain. Apart from its excessive centralization, he believed that the company’s technology platform- which he helped build- is still not able to cater to any real-world applications.
In part, he said, “Even the community is organized under centralization. No diverse voices in TRON ecosystem. The whole project has developed into a monetary tool without any “decentralize the web” spirit.”
The sentiment here is pretty simple; the fact that everyone on the platform seems to agree with how it is being operated isn’t a sign of diversity.
TRON is no longer about innovation
Take the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hard fork (as well as all the other hard forks that can be traced to Bitcoin itself ) as an example. These hard forks led to versions of Bitcoin that were “ideal” in the eyes of their developers. Essentially, Chen believes that Justin Sun, TRON’s CEO, has focused more on making money with the platform that actually fostering innovation.
Yet another deviation from the objective of the blockchain. Going forward, Chen revealed that he would be working on his own blockchain, which he dubbed the Volume Network (VOL). Chen touted his network, claiming that it will be a truly decentralized blockchain project. Chen claimed that through the VOL, he would be able to achieve true decentralization by implementing the mining methods with the least threshold.
He said, “At present, the high threshold of ASIC and the high price of GPU make many people hesitate to mine. This kind of project, which eliminates subsequent players from entering the market, is unsustainable. I want miners and newcomers to use a new generation of hard drive mining method, and still get a safe and reliable digital currency while storing ‘useful’ files.”
He also described the network as a community project, stating that he took $1 million with him and a $30,000 valuation to pilot the community and attract more users as time goes on. The news of Chen’s departure didn’t seem to affect the value of TRX much, as it was still trading slightly above where it began for the week. However, for all the hype that Chen has placed on the VOL, it is sure worth keeping an eye on it to see how it performs.
