The Grid.
I was a kid in 1982 when the movie, “Tron” was released into theatres. As many generations say of their childhood, “it was a very different time back then.” Arcades were the place to play, to demonstrate your skills face to face with opponents… not behind the safety of anonymity. No, as an 8 year old you had to stand right next to the much larger 15 year old wearing what always seemed to be more intimidating clothing than what you were wearing, and act like it didn’t matter to you as you crushed them. Knowing the moves in games like Street Fighter II was like knowing very privileged, trade-secret information. Game guides weren’t around much until the Mortal Kombat days, and that’s when arcades saw true champions.
Aladdin’s Castle. The gold colored, metal tokens had a genie’s lamp on one side and the name of the arcade on the other.
The tokens were 25 cents. Not much fluctuation in their value over 30 years! My older brother held the high score on Galaga for what seemed like forever. My specialty was Street Fighter II, and Tekken. The air was always thick with competition, and the smell of pizza and cigarettes permeated one’s senses to a fault, but it didn’t matter. Once the eyes laid sight on those bright and beautiful pixelated images of an X-wing flying down Death Star canyons, or Ryu pulling off a cornering combo topped off with a dragon punch, some level of inner bliss was achieved. The 1982 film took the concept of the arcade and turned it into a digital colosseum where glowing gladiators competed for survival, while the creator of this ‘Grid’ is taken into his new world and is also forced to fight for his life, and the freedom of captive programs. It’s an epic of monumental proportions.
Gaming is just as much as an escape for some, as books or film are to others, and it has come a long, long way since then.
OMG The Internets!
In the late 80’s and early 90’s the internet began to allow players to compete against one another from the comfort of their own homes. In fact, the reason I bought my first 233 mhz Hewlett Packard Pavilion was to play Microsoft’s “Age of Empires” against my neighbors.
This added elements to game play that elevated the experience beyond console games, and being able to choose how, when, and where you played gave the average online player of the 90’s increased doses of something all gamers enjoy. Freedom.
Any gamer appreciates the ability to customize their controls, the look of their character, or other facets of their virtual reality. Some games allowed you to bend the rules around things like gravity, or the speed of your character. Indeed, the more freedom a user has in gaming and entertainment, the better. That hasn’t always been the intent of the distributors of entertainment however, and many of the powers that be have inevitably tried to wall up the freedom of the consumer, to measure it; maintain it…and of course, profit from it.
"Ever hear of Tron?"
I heard about TRX in December when it was at .014 USD.
A friend asked if I had heard of Tron, and I quickly did a little recon, sending back a few bullet-point pluses on the token. The more I read however, the more I convinced myself to purchase. (Not only for all the potential this project had, but the image of a cryptocurrency using the name Tron, geared towards the gaming and entertainment industry? Yes. Yes please.) I invested in a modest amount at the time and watched it grow to an unbelievable price in early January. This last week however, saw the price decrease due to a number of FUD reasons, (and January market downtime) all of which are addressed in a very well-researched blog post by TwentySumCrypto at Medium.com, and summarily dismissed as misunderstandings and over-reaching assumptions after a simple study of the facts. Did the Tron Foundation misrepresent facts, or attempt to mislead anyone? When you say you’ve solidified a deal with Baofeng.com and the naysayers leap all over you saying “well, the deal was actually signed with a division of Baofeng that doesn’t have access to their 200 million users”, doesn’t that mean that you still signed a deal with Baofeng? I believe Tron’s intent was to say, “Hey look, we’ve got our foot in the door to what could become something huge.”
Tron (TRX) is the brainchild of young Chinese entrepreneur Justin (Yuchen) Sun. To call it a simple ethereum token would be a severe understatement, as it is poised to become an independent yet interconnected entertainment content creation, and distribution platform, (phew) with its own blockchain ledger designed to connect users and producers of online content and rewarding them for their efforts, among other touted potential use cases. According to a Forbes article on Justin Sun:
“The global market for digital entertainment products has been estimated according to various sources to be worth approximately $1 trillion, split between lifestyle ($200bn), online betting ($500bn), online gaming (c.$100bn) and information sharing ($100bn).”
That is a massive market, and the Chinese portion accounts for 150 to 200 billion dollars.
Tron is set to dive into that sector first, which is ready as ever for such a change. Whether or not the Chinese government thinks it is, is discussed in this article from inverse.com.
In the words of the Tron Foundation, some of the things they're trying to accomplish are:
1. Exodus
Data Liberation
A mechanism of upload, storage, and distribution which is based on peer-to-peer and distributed contents. In the >Exodus phase, on the basis of the distributed storage technology, TRON will provide users with a completely free and >reliable platform for data publication, storage and dissemination.
2. Odyssey
Content Empowerment
Economic incentives, empowerment, content ecology and block chain technology will create a fully competitive economic mechanism with fair returns for content creation, distribution and dissemination. Therefore, individuals can be encouraged and contents can be empowered, thus constantly expanding the boundary of the system.
3. Great Voyage
Personal ICO
Based on the advantage of block chain, TRON solves three major issues: income measurement, dividend payment and management of supporters, and achieves significant transformation from the "fan economy" to the "fan finance". (I like this feature! You get paid to be a producer and user!)
4. Apollo
Free Movement of Value—De-centralized Token Trading Exclusively for Individuals
To reach the goal that each content producer in the TRON system can issue their own tokens, the system must have a complete solution for de-centralized trading. Through the establishment of the de-centralized trading platform, the value, property rights and risks of the system can be freely traded and exchanged, thus increasing the economic vitality of the whole system in geometric multiples.
5. Star Trek
Traffic Monetizing—Gaming of De-centralization and Market Forecast
The size of the global gaming market in 2014 exceeded $450 billion. Traffic brought by the TRON content platform makes it possible to build an online gaming platform for de-centralization. Developers can freely build online gaming platforms through TRON, providing fully autonomous gaming and predicting market functions.
6. Eternity
Traffic Conversion—De-centralized Game
In 2016, the global video game market amounted to $ 9.66 billion, of which the scale of the phone game market was $ 4.61 billion, accounting for 42%. TRON provides the possibility for establishing an on-line game platform. Developers can freely set up game platforms through TRON, achieve crowd-funding for game development, and make it possible for common investors to invest in games. (Power to the players!)
Tron has stepped onto the digital entertainment scene to empower users of online content at a time when they’ve been measured, controlled, and hypnotized into thinking they’re in control, when in fact that couldn’t be further from the truth. The huge market mentioned above has been generated mostly by corporate creators of content selling their products to the consumer. The “consumer”. Think about that label for a moment. Tron wants to change that label from “consumer”, to “driver” of content and markets. The internet enabled us to view and travel the world in a new way, but in came the corporate world of sales and marketing. Big Data. Pulling on the reigns of the people screaming “WHOAAAA SLOW DOWN YE BEASTS!!”
Blockchain will change more than just currency and payment systems. It has the potential to change how we interact with the world, for the greater good. A well connected, visionary company like Tron deserves a place in pioneering such a frontier, putting power, and value back in the hands of the users.
Those who are unwilling to accept how crypto-currencies like TRX can bring about a more harmonious relationship between content drivers and creators will find themselves left behind on the Grid, while the rest of us shape the future.
Some have gone as far to say that crypto is the future of monetization; lending, borrowing, paying, transferring, exchanging, earning. Everything.
The competitors of crypto are feeling a little threatened by the rise in wealth outside their walls. (Anyone else wonder if they're just going to sit idly by, and let the crypto rise continue?)
Is TRX a good buy? The price almost doubled in just the last 24 hours. The Tron Foundation is finding places to use their product almost weekly. Tron has, and continues to build a solid team of experienced and talented individuals who stand on a foundation of great mission values, and attainable long term goals. Tron is aiming to have as big an impact on gaming and entertainment as the internet did for us humble arcade patrons.
You tell me.