Episode15: Recap with H.E. Justin Sun and Peter Smith
09/09/2022
Welcome to this special recap of Around the Block, TRON DAO’s way of staying in touch with the community by bringing you expert opinions and conversations about blockchain topics that matter. In episode 15, Dave Uhryniak, Director of Ecosystem Development at TRON DAO introduces both H.E. Justin Sun, Founder of TRON, and Peter Smith, Co-founder and CEO of Blockchain.com as Peter will be interviewing Justin himself.
In this episode streamed on September 9, 2022, the interview begins with Peter giving a brief introduction about how Blockchain.com provides a platform for holding, using, managing crypto assets, and exploring cryptocurrency transactions. It also develops financial services standards and infrastructure for cryptocurrencies. He then expresses he’s excited to be joined by Justin and mentions how TRON is an open-souced blockchain platform that can run smart contracts and is used for building decentralized applications.
Peter starts by asking Justin how he earned his first piece of cash. Justin explained that he came into the crypto industry around 2012 when he first began researching bitcoin and saw an arbitrage opportunity between local bitcoin and Taobao. So, he bought it on Taobao and sold it on localbitcoin.com and that was his start in the crypto space.
On the topic of Justin entering the crypto industry, Peter asked how that lead him to found TRON. Justin explained how he joined a company called Opencoin in 2013, which helped him gain a better understanding of how the crypto world works. Around 2017, Justin realized there were only a few options available for developing a smart contract in the market, so he created TRON to have more alternatives, which is why he thinks it has attracted users and dApp developers building on the TRON blockchain.
Switching topics, Peter asked Justin when measuring the success of each project on TRON what are the three or four core metrics he’s tracking closely. Justin said he is a data-driven person so first, he tracks the daily stablecoin transaction number to understand how the market works, he also keeps track of how many users create accounts, which is around 100K to 150K new accounts daily, and the daily active addresses to see how many people are using TRON, including the most popular contract on TRON as well. Justin also looks at other blockchain platforms to see how other popular apps know the current status of the industry.
There are currently 1.5 to 2 million people using TRON every day, Justin explained, and 110 million people in total addresses. Only 50% less than Ethereum so Justin hopes to grow and catch up to Ethereum soon.
Turning the tables, Justin then asked Peter about the strategy behind his company Blockchain.com and how he will further develop it in the future. Peter explained they’re focused on their original strategy, which is providing access to crypto for people.
“We have a very different mission from TRON, which is building a network,” Peter said. “Our mission is to provide access to all of the networks, meaning – how do we make crypto easy for people to use?”
Today, they’re responsible for about 30% of all the bitcoin transactions globally with similar numbers across other blockchains. Justin noted that Blockchain.com was one of the first websites he used for bitcoin transactions nearly a decade ago. He said it was the reason he got into crypto in the first place.
Looking to the future, Peter asked Justin what his outlook on the crypto market is.
“We still need to continue to build and also continue to build a good product for our customers before we can experience a crypto rally again,” H.E. Justin said. “But I think this is a good time to hire good people and build a good team. It’s a good time for investment to build a good product.”
Thank you for reading this special recap of another great episode of Around the Block. We look forward to bringing you another episode with our team, bringing Web3 experts together for engaging conversations.