News of Tron Mainnet launch being moved up to May 31st has a lot of holders excited. Originally slated for a date no later than July 1st, the development team has been working night and day (literally, with locations in the San Francisco and Beijing) to not only reach this deadline, but now officially preparing for its early release. With mainnet launch nearing, however, many people new to cryptocurrency were not really sure what that meant or how it effected them. One of the key-points of the mainnet launch will be Tron’s conversion of the Ethereum ERC-20 token to the Tron-20. How this conversion takes place and what that means, seems to be the biggest question, so we’ll address that today. 🌒
A little background: Currently Tron is an ERC-20 token, meaning it was built off of Ethereum as a smart contract. The token has limitations, which is why it is used for the most part as a token for ICO’s. Justin Sun’s plans for Tron meant that Tron had to become its own coin (platform), able to host contracts for other companies and run more efficiently than Ethereum, (Going from 15 transactions per second to 1000 transactions per second) along with cheaper transactions. So thus the reason for the mainnet, a live functioning blockchain platform created by Tron, to run the Tron-20 token. 🌒
So how does this affect you, a Tron $TRX holder? Well, currently your bags are filled with Tron ERC-20 tokens. And Tron needs you to convert these to their Tron-20 standard. Some of you have them on hard wallets, some on software wallets and other on exchanges, and for now, that is totally fine. After Tron launches their mainnet, we will all need for our ERC-20 tokens to be converted. Here is what will (should) happen: 🌒
Tron will make an announcement that the mainnet launch is complete.
They will notify holders on when to begin moving coins to the exchange for conversion. (Yes, the exchange will ultimately need to convert the tokens. They will trade out your ERC-20 for Tron-20) 🌒
They will notify you of how long you will have to complete this process. (For other coins I have seen a general timeline of about two months.)
After the conversion is done, for a short time period you will be limited as to where you can move funds. Obviously the exchange is a place to store them, also the offical Tron wallet.
Your quantity and value do not change. What you had going in, is what you have going out. Price is dictated by the market. 🌒
So now for the questions pertaining to that breakdown. Until the deadline Tron sets, your coins are perfectly fine where they are at. You do not need to move them until told to by Tron. Yes, at some point you will have to move your coins to be converted, this is part of the process that everyone has to deal with when an ERC-20 becomes its own coin(ICON $ICX in that process now.) Until Nano Ledger S has given you an update for their product to be Tron-20 compatible, you will not be able to send your Tron back to your hard wallet. Why is that? Well, if you tried sending your $TRX now to an $LTC address, what would happen to your Tron coins? They would be gone forever, as the addresses are not compatible. Same thing with the Hard Wallet, they need to be compatible. So you will need to keep them on the exchange or transfer to the Tron wallet. I have total faith in the security of the Tron Wallet and believe they should have all safety measures in place like a Two Factor Authentication (2FA) to ensure your funds are safe. Nano Leger has a road map on how they add coins to their wallets, but I can assure you with the overwhelming volume Tron has, they will be looking to add that rather quickly. 🌒
For the most part, this is what you can expect with the mainnet launch and necessary conversion of tokens. It is a slight hassle in an overall bigger picture that will be huge to the value of Tron $TRX for the long haul. Without the mainnet and Tron-20, Tron is limited on what they can accomplish. With their own platform and coin Tron now has the ability to start working on their road map, which ultimately will increase the value of Tron exponentially long term, as we will be able to host smart contracts, increase volume via users and continue the climb to higher prices for dedicated holders.