On February 7, Cold Card and Opendime creator, Rodolfo Novak (also known as NVK), tweeted a picture of himself with Tron founder Justin Sun and Blockstream’s CEO Adam Back. Novak said “Ethereum was over” and the three had a plan to move Tron to Liquid, a network that leverages the BTC chain. Whether the tweet was a joke or not, the picture got the crypto community fired up and it initiated heated debates about the legitimacy of both Tron and Ethereum.
ETH and TRX Community Debate After Viral Tweet
One could consider the crypto networks Tron (TRX) and Ethereum (ETH) competitors within the cryptoconomy. While the ETH network is older than TRX, they both have similar goals and do similar things. As Ethereum strives to be a “world computer,” Tron aims to accomplish this feat as well, but with more of a focus on entertainment. They both leverage concepts like decentralized finance (defi), decentralized apps (dapps) and permissionless systems for token creation (ERC20 & TRC20).
When Novak tweeted about moving TRX to the Liquid network, lots of people considered it a joke, while others took the tweet very seriously. Despite what people think about Tron or Ethereum, news.Bitcoin.com decided to look at the two networks to see how they both compare as far as onchain data, market statistics, development, funds locked in defi, and both project’s social media ratings. We want to let our readers decide which project is better by weighing the pros and cons of each crypto without all the opinions.
We have a plan. #Ethereum is over. Tron moving to #liquidnetwork on #bitcoin. Cc @udiWertheimer
9417:13 PM – Feb 7, 2020Twitter Ads info and privacy392 people are talking about this
Tron vs. Ethereum: Stacking Up the Data
On February 7, 2020, Coin Metrics data shows the BTC chain processed roughly 333,000 onchain transactions. ETH saw a total of 626,000 transactions in the 24 hour period while TRX did around 816,000 on Friday. While ETH has been consistently above BTC transactions per day, TRX has also been consistently above ETH’s daily average.
Both Ethereum and Tron have tokens that represent the stablecoin tether (USDT), but the ETH chain has a whole lot more. Statistics from Tronscan on Saturday show that there’s 814 million USDT held on the Tron network. Today’s data stemming from Etherscan indicates there’s a whopping 2.2 billion USDT leveraging the ETH chain.
As far as stablecoin usage is concerned, Ethereum outpaces Tron by a long shot, as the chain also has other stablecoin tokens like PAX, USDC, and TUSD. But it’s true that both networks have seen more tethers migrate to each blockchain during certain periods of 2019. In fact, as far as funds locked into defi, Ethereum takes the cake when it comes to decentralized finance and centralized finance (cefi) applications as well, with projects like Maker, Compound, and Instadapp. Defi applications on ETH touched a milestone on February 6, when the total value locked (TVL) surpassed $1 billion.
Where market action and fiat value are the focus, tron (TRX) is trading for $0.02 per coin and the cryptocurrency is still down 92% from its all-time high (ATH) of $0.30. Ethereum (ETH) is swapping for $224 per coin at the time of publication, which is 84% down from its ATH of $1,431. Against USD over the last 12 months, TRX is down 18% and against BTC the crypto is down 69%. With ETH the crypto has gained 86% against the U.S. dollar in a year but against BTC it is still down 30%.
Trade volume data from Messari shows the reported volume for TRX is around $203 million in the last 24 hours, but Messari’s “real volume” index indicates there’s only been $49 million in TRX trades. As far as ETH is concerned, reported trade volume on Saturday is roughly $3.5 billion, but again Messari’s “real volume” index shows less at $349 million. Tallying up the aforementioned statistics shows that ETH was a better investment over the last year, it has more liquidity, and trade volume as well.
As far as yearly Github activity, coincheckup.com data shows that Tron has outpaced ETH development during the last 12 months in regard to tallied commits. The Coindesk social media benchmark shows ETH has around 451,000 Reddit subscribers and the same number of Twitter followers giving the project a 23% social rating.
Tron’s Reddit community has about 71,000 subscribers and Tron has around 497,000 Twitter followers giving the project a 9.7% social rating. ETH has around 2,000 Github watchers and roughly 445 developers contributing to the ETH codebase. Tron has about 309 Github watchers and 118 developers that have contributed to the TRX Github repository. While there are 9,200 forks of Ethereum, there are only 673 Tron forks.
The Ethereum project got a head start and Tron is not as old of a blockchain in comparison. They both have influential leaders at the helm with Justin Sun and Vitalik Buterin who are both still around to weigh in with opinions, unlike Satoshi. Both projects have a lot of investors who believe that either ETH or TRX will be dominant and there are definitely those that think both will serve a purpose. Either way, both exist in prominent market positions today as ETH and TRX are in the top 15 largest market capitalization list and might be for quite some time.
What do you think about these two cryptocurrencies? Do you think Tron is better than Ethereum or vice versa? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
Disclaimer: Price articles and market updates are intended for informational purposes only and should not be considered as trading advice. Neither Bitcoin.com nor the author is responsible for any losses or gains, as the ultimate decision to conduct a trade is made by the reader. Always remember that only those in possession of the private keys are in control of the “money.” Cryptocurrency prices referenced in this article were recorded on February 8, 2020.
Image credits: Shutterstock, Coin Metrics, Markets.Bitcoin.com, coincheckup.com, Coindesk’s social media benchmark, defipulse.com, Etherscan, Tronscan, Fair Use, and Pixabay.
