On this episode of the Lightbulb Series, host James O’Brien is joined by Justin Sun, founder of TRON. Justin Sun learned about Bitcoin in 2012 while studying at the University of Pennsylvania. After graduation, Sun started working for Ripple Labs until 2015 when he founded his own company. TRON is dedicated to the stablecoin network while being one of the most popular smart contracts in the world.

O’Brien asks Sun about his goal of decentralizing media. Decentralized social and game platforms have become very popular. “TRON is one of the most prominent game developers in the GameFi industry.” Sun describes the numerous games that they have developed. “Decentralized gaming, which we call GameFi, is a very powerful tool to unite users. For example, with decentralized games, most of the users come with their own equipment, and the metals and coins they earn in the game eventually become a digit in a centralized database. You cannot erase them, lose your account, be banned by developers, and you can also earn money. With GameFi, the user dominates their account.”

O’Brien asks him how he decided to go proof of stake versus proof of work. Sun states that he has always believed in Bitcoin. When Satoshi first created it as proof of work, the goal was aimed to make it become what it is today. “We need proof of work to keep the network fully decentralized and with so much mining power, it is virtually impossible to sabotage the network which is what Bitcoin needed.” Although, Sun would recommend using proof of stake when creating a coin or protocol today. “Proof of stake gives power to the token holder and users of the blockchain. TRON is one of the first proof of stake networks in the world, and while it was being developed, most other tokens were proof of work.” Sun continues, “the decentralized governance structure of the blockchain is one of the most important aspects of the whole industry. Proof of stake was the best choice I have made while designing the TRON network.”

The TRON network has many other offerings. TRON is the largest Tether network with almost forty billion dollars and ten billion dollars in transactions every day making it a very powerful stablecoin network. TRON also offers several decentralized lending protocols. As Sun mentioned earlier, they have multiple GameFi networks as well as NFT trading platforms. Sun is an art collector and is in the process of moving traditional artists’ work into NFTs and displaying them on the blockchain. This would eliminate any traveling one would have to do to see a well-known piece of art and allow more people to view and enjoy these masterpieces. Sun loves sharing his art and currently displays them online. O’Brien states that “TRON is bringing art to the masses in a more accessible format.”

O’Brien and Sun wrap up the episode talking about BitTorrent and DLive. Sun believes that people have underestimated BitTorrent and that it is the first and most widely used decentralized network before Bitcoin. TRON recently released the DLive network which is a decentralized live-streaming platform. Sun says, “everyone can use DLive without being shut down by central parties.” Sun ends the episode by sharing his excitement for TRON this upcoming year.

Listen to the full episode for more!