Oct 10, 2018 · 18 min read

“Don’t exclude the possibility that Satoshi Nakamoto will come back to join our team”

Li Xiaolai once said that one who would like to be successful in the blockchain industry must become an Internet celebrity.

Justin Sun, born in 1990, has been labeled with a lot of things His natural tendency of channeling traffics with the identity as an Internet celebrity and his community-based entrepreneurship have matured to an outstanding level.

He won the first prize in the New Concept Composition Contest, stroke a great comeback from a third-grade college to Peking University within a year, made the cover with Jiang Fangzhou in Asia Weekly for criticizing Peking University’s “consultation system”, gave up school for business when studying in the University of Pennsylvania(Ivy League), and earned his first fortune by investing in Tesla and Bitcoin;

He was the chief representative of Greater China for Ripple, returned to China and created a voice broadcast social App called “Peiwo” with TongDaoDaShu; he then became the youngest of the first group of students at Hupan University sponsored by Jack Ma,opened a paid column The Road to Financial Freedom Revolution at Himalayas, appeared on popular TV shows like A Date with Luyu and Only You, had a “crowdfunding love affair” with another Internet celebrity of the 90’s generation, Ma Jiajia, who started her business with sex toys; he advocates a money-oriented attitude of young people who should not marry or buy a car or a house before 30 years old.

He published the book The Brave New World, and established the blockchain project TRON that now has a market value of 13.4 billion yuan, ranking the 13th in the global cryptocurrency market then successively acquired the world’s largest P2P download platform BitTorrent with 170 million monthly active users as and the top-level domain name Blockchain.org, aiming to become the №1 search engine for blockchain transaction data.

On August 29, 2018, Justin Sun’s Facebook followers exceeded 800,000, equal to the Twitter followers ofVitalik, the founder of ETH. The number of TRON accounts also exceeded 280, 000, reaching the same level as EOS.

Some criticized Justin Sun for suspected plagiarism when he was studying at the University of Pennsylvania;some straightly pointed out the harvesting suspicion with big price fluctuations at the beginning of TRON. Whether these suspections were true or not, they depicted a three-dimensional Justin Sun.

Last week, Mars Finance met Justin Sun at the TRON office in Zhongguancun after the global live-streamed launching event of the TRON Virtual Machine (TVM). Justin was wearing a black T-shirt with the TRON logo. The fresh look made him look just the same as the rest of the company.

The TV at TRON’s front desk is repeatedly playing the show Only You with Justin Sun in it.

In a small reception room of only a few square meters, Justin Sun spoke loudly — even a little bit noisy. He have a fine sense of humor and self-assertion in his words, maybe because of his Leo sign, or as someone who was born in the 90s , or with the “troll” temperament brought by Peking University. His identity as an Internet celebrity on the front line along the way, and his experience of making a major leap from a small town and going into business at the sake of school have also brought him a unique sense of confidence.

From time to time, he had some expressions that are often used by business owners and with strong personal characteristics , like “Let me tell you about this”, as well as some unique cyberspeak used by the 90s generation and his personal own remarks.

“Coindesk always disgraces us and intentionally disgraces us. I’m speechless.”

Justin Sun said that TRON is expected to become the first public chain after the launch of the TVM because Ethereum is slow, EOS is expensive yet TRON is fast and cheap, which may solve the problem of large-scale application. Project Atlas is a modification on the basis of the world’s largest P2P community, BitTorrent with 170 million monthly active users, using Token incentives, which follows the wish of Komoto Nakamoto in the Bitcoin White Paper.

“We don’t exclude the possibility that Satoshi Nakamoto will come back to join our team. Maybe, Satoshi Nakamoto no longer surfaces just because he hasn’t found a good project except Bitcoin.”

Judging from his previous achievements, Justin Sun has strong executive ability. It seems the best way for the post-90s billionaire to set up a business and make lots of money at the fastest speed in history is to flatulently tell stories as an Internet celebrity and then land in the blockchain community. At present, TRON’s global team has more than 300 people.

As a lucky guy of the times in a sunrise industry with no major setbacks experienced, the future for him is beautiful, but he still needs to precipitate for the profound wisdom.

Talking about the virtual machine: ETH is slow, EOS is expensive, but TRON is fast and cheap.

Mars Finance Q1: Free test can be done for project research and development, which can save some gas fees if the virtual machine is launched in the public chain. What is the impact of TRON virtual machine launch on TRON and the industry?

Justin Sun: A great influence. Previously, TRON is actually a transaction transfer platform, but has become a development platform after the launch of the TVM, greatly improving room for imagination of the network. TRON may be the third public chain with Turing Complete virtual machine after ETH and EOS. The speed of our virtual machine is at least 200 times greater than the EVM. Although EOS is faster than ETH, it is particularly difficult to use. Everything needs to be paid, such as account opening and operation. The disadvantages of ETH and EOS respectively are slow and expensive, but TRON is fast and cheap.

Mars Finance Q2: Why didn’t EOS realize your so-called problem that its price is too expensive?

Justin Sun: I think that EOS ecosystem is different from our culture. EOS paid more attention to the hyped price, but we are more concerned about the user experience for developers.

For example, the Hong Kong Government has a lot of land which is prevented from developing, so that the housing price is hyped up. That way, real estate developers are happy, but ordinary people are worried about the high rental and housing price, when in fact, Hong Kong has a lot of land to be developed. Similarly, EOS does not need to set such a low memory, but they did so to raise the price of RAM so that it is difficult for people to use. For example, if I were Singapore, right next door to the Hong Kong Government, I will attract entrepreneurs to me by releasing cheap houses. It’s also an important attraction promoted by us for EOS developers that it’s very cheap to develop on TRON.

Mars Finance Q3: How many developers are there in TRON? How about the growth rate?

Justin Sun: The number of TRON accounts has been growing. We have 287,000 accounts now. EOS has about 290,000 accounts. Our accounts are only a little bit fewer than EOS accounts. I think this trend will continue, and maybe there will be 20% or 30% users more than EOS at the end of this quarter.

Why is the growth rate of EOS so slow? Now, an account opened in EOS needs hundreds of Yuan, which is more expensive than a bank account opening,so only hundreds of accounts a day are added for EOS, and thousands of accounts a day are added for us; but we are about ten times faster than EOS. I think the key factor is our cheap price.

Why is ETH slow? Casper, a so-called optimization program, was launched in 2016, but there was no progress in two years. Vitalik sent a Tweet some time ago and published an article a few days ago because he had no excuse for the little progress. At TRON, if a problem is left unsolved for two months, the key person in charge will be fired, letting alone waiting for two years. We are competing with EOS and ETH in terms of time. One of them is slow and the other is expensive. But TRON is fast and cheap. That’s why developers are attracted to us. Being fast and cheap is very important for the whole blockchain industry, and it can realize f mass application. Previously, an article says that there are only a few hundred daily active users (DAU) on ETH and EOS applications. Being both cheap and fast, our DAU number will soon grow from a few hundred to a few thousand, or tens of thousand, even a few million, entering the age of mass application. That’s why I think the launch of the TVM plays a significant role in accelerating the development of the industry.

Mars Finance Q4: At present, not many public chains have virtual machines. However, public chains that do not have virtual machines, such as Mixin, are also doing well. Is virtual machine is a decisive factor for a good public chain?

Justin Sun: I personally think that a public chain without virtual machine is the same as a car without an intelligent operating system. I’m not saying that the car isn’t good, but its potential is much smaller. Tesla has an intelligent operating system, features like smart driving and entertainment can be developed on top of it. Virtual machine to a public chain is like an intelligent operating system to a car. Virtual machines are not necessities, but if you want to be imaginative and to embrace the next generation, then you need to have a virtual machine The positioning of Bitcoin is SGMW. It is just for transactions, so Bitcoin does not need a virtual machine. Smart contracts will not be as good without the virtual machine.Talking about BitTorrent: The strongest-ever blockchainendorsement

Mars Finance Q5: It is said that BitTorrent now has 170 million monthly active users (MAU). As soon as the news on TRON’s acquisition came out, everyone says that TRON will have the largest blockchain user group. What plan does TRON have based on such a large user group?

Justin Sun: Yes. But actually it is not my own idea. It is a very important wish of Satoshi Nakamoto in his Bitcoin White Paper. In the paper, it says if Bitcoin wants to have value, it must be transferred to a large decentralized network. That’s why the acquisition is the strongest-ever blockchain endorsement, and it is another endorsement of Satoshi Nakamoto besides Bitcoin. Bitcoin was worthless when it was invented by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008, but BitTorrent network was already well-known around the world.

For BitTorrent, economic incentives shall be given to those who contribute to the network for it to prosper continuously. Since 2000, the 170 million MAU have been relying on the so-called Internet sharing spirit to spread torrents without charging the community. A digital magazine specializing in BitTorrent says 38% of the torrents become inactive after the first month, which is the most important problem that TRON wants to solve. Economic incentives will be given for seeders on BitTorrent, and even if the incentives aren’t huge, the ecosystem can be sustainable.