Original author: Jordan
Original source: PANews
The laws of nature are cyclical, and all things return to nature. Encrypted narratives also seem to be in a cycle.
The performance issues discussed at the beginning of Bitcoin have now resurfaced - block space, side chains, lightning networks, especially after the Bitcoin inscription Ordinals triggered a new round of market hotspots, the crypto community began to return to its original intention and re-examine the early expansion solutions, that is, Layer 2 based on the Bitcoin blockchain. In this context, TRON DAO promptly noticed the focus of the community. After the beginning of the Year of the Dragon, Justin Sun quickly responded to the needs of the community and played a trump card driven by the atmosphere of the TRON community: officially announced the Bitcoin second-layer solution and roadmap.
According to the roadmap plan disclosed by Justin Sun, the TRON Bitcoin L2 strategy has three phases, namely roadmap phases α, β and γ.
Phase α: Bridge TRON ecosystem tokens to Bitcoin
First, in the roadmap phase α, the TRON network will be connected to Bitcoin through cross-chain connections, and the conversion will be facilitated through exchanges. In the future, we will see assets based on the Bitcoin network expand to TRON's bridge, and TRON will also work hard to integrate various TRON tokens including USDT, TRX, BTT, JST, SUN, NFT, WIN into the Bitcoin network through cross-chain technology, which will enable TRON's tokens to interact and interoperate seamlessly with the Bitcoin network.
At the same time, TRON DAO will also explore Ordinals and Bitcoin second-layer solutions, and plans to invest in a user-friendly wallet and tools that support BRC-20 tokens, marking TRON DAO's exploration of Ordinals and Bitcoin second-layer solutions.
In fact, TRON has already touched upon the key point of Bitcoin L2 in the first phase - "bridging". This innovative approach aims to decentralize and interweave various tokens within the TRON network, including stablecoins, with the Bitcoin network and its built Layer 2, such as Bitcoin Ordinals. Among many combinations, this integration will not only directly connect TRON to Bitcoin, but will also enable the TRON ecosystem value of more than US$55 billion to be connected to the Bitcoin network, injecting more vitality into Bitcoin.
Needless to say, TRON will not simply play the role of a "Bitcoin sidechain" because it has its own security model that is independent of the Bitcoin blockchain. From this perspective, since bridging is already relatively mature, extending the Bitcoin blockchain in this way is not an option in itself, but the best solution for TRON to solve the "trilemma" of Bitcoin decentralization, security, and speed/scalability. In the future, it can even transfer Bitcoin on-chain transactions to off-chain, from the Bitcoin blockchain to TRON.
The market attitude also proves this point. After the news was released, related cryptocurrencies such as TRX, BTT, JST, and SUN all rose, reflecting the market's optimism about TRON's Bitcoin second-layer network integration plan (Note: The data in the table below is from Coingecko, and the data was collected on February 27, 2024):
Phase β: Achieving a “win-win” situation through ecological cooperation
In the roadmap phase β, TRON will cooperate with multiple Bitcoin layer 2 protocols and gradually announce important partnerships. These collaborations will allow TRON users to participate in the re-staking activities of major Bitcoin layer 2 networks, supporting the development of the Bitcoin layer 2 ecosystem with TRON's diversified asset portfolio.
Compared to many early Bitcoin Layer 2 projects that started from scratch, TRON has already achieved a breakthrough from 0 to 1. Since its birth in September 2017, TRON has become one of the largest on-chain ecosystems in the entire network, which means that TRON has its own resource advantages when cooperating with the Bitcoin Layer 2 protocol. It can not only effectively implement related business applications, but also meet and expand the needs of various application scenarios. More importantly, users and developers within TRON can also provide effective support for the Bitcoin ecosystem, and even "feed back" their own traffic to the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Moreover, based on the alpha stage of the roadmap, TRON and Bitcoin will complete the "bridge", which will undoubtedly bring more imagination to the two ecosystems. As Sun Yuchen said before, one of the shackles that plague the development of the current encryption industry is the "ecological island" problem. Many projects are often restricted to a single blockchain, making it difficult to obtain other ecological resources and users, and even more impossible to achieve the goal of true decentralization.
According to the roadmap phase β, TRON users will participate in the re-staking activities of the main Bitcoin layer 2 network. This will not only increase the value of the two ecosystems at the same time, but also achieve the purpose of user mutual use. A large number of TRON users will enter the Bitcoin ecosystem, bringing a steady stream of incremental users to the world's largest blockchain. On the other hand, more high-quality Bitcoin chain projects will also be delivered to the TRON ecosystem, reaching a wider user audience and community, ultimately allowing the two ecosystems to benefit from each other and achieve a win-win situation.
As the community has seen, the TRON ecosystem is developing rapidly. After actively deploying in multiple fields such as games, finance, and social networking, it has built a prosperous and diverse blockchain ecosystem. According to Tronscan data (as shown below), the number of TRON ecosystem accounts has exceeded 200 million, with hundreds of thousands of developers and thousands of DApp applications, and the number of on-chain contracts has reached nearly 3.5 million.
As the world’s largest stablecoin market protocol, TRON has a stablecoin market value of $55 billion. At the time of writing this article, TRON’s decentralized finance total locked value (TVL) has also exceeded $22.5 billion, setting a record high.
Phase γ: Promote the “big integration” of Bitcoin, TRON, and BTTC
In the roadmap phase γ, Justin Sun proposed a second-layer solution to integrate TRON, BitTorrent Chain (BTTC) and the Bitcoin network. This move undoubtedly marks an important milestone. It is reported that the relevant solution will introduce a Bitcoin-compatible protocol that aims to maintain the speed and low fees of the POS system while ensuring the security of POW and UTXO when combined with Bitcoin L2.
In fact, although most existing Layer 2s inherit the security and reliability of the original chain, they have not been tested in terms of robustness like Bitcoin. As a somewhat independent network, TRON's introduction to Bitcoin L2 is bound to add new risks and challenges. Frankly speaking, the key point of the roadmap phase γ is to focus on the security of POW and UTXO when combined with Bitcoin L2, which is also a point that other similar solutions have overlooked.
As the world's first heterogeneous chain interoperability expansion protocol, BTTC, jointly created by the TRON core team and BitTorrent, adopts a multi-node verification mechanism, with completely transparent escrow accounts. At the same time, it has the TRON mainnet as a strong guarantee for the security of the BTTC network, and is one of the best cross-chain expansion solutions for the current mainstream public chains. Of course, on the basis of perfect security, efficient speed and low fees may inject new energy and financial resources into the TRON network, which is likely to have a positive impact on the valuation of TRX and BTTC tokens in the future.
Stick to the original intention of encryption and lay a solid foundation for a decentralized world
Frankly speaking, the three-stage strategy of TRON and Bitcoin L2 "αβγ" has attracted much attention in the industry since its launch. Especially since Bitcoin successfully broke through the $57,000 mark just after the Chinese New Year of the Dragon, the "strong alliance" of TRON and Bitcoin is timely. This series of operations has made the crypto community sigh: Why can Justin Sun always seize the industry trend?
In fact, despite having acquired a huge fortune, Justin Sun has always been working in the crypto market. Born in the 1990s, he became famous at a young age and is a legendary and controversial figure.
Justin Sun's fate with Bitcoin began in 2012, when he was pursuing a master's degree at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. Bitcoin was in its infancy at the time, and its decentralization, anonymity and other characteristics deeply attracted Justin Sun. He keenly perceived the huge potential of Bitcoin and regarded it as a future financial revolution.
In 2017, Justin Sun founded TRON, dedicated to building a decentralized Internet infrastructure. TRON is based on blockchain technology and aims to break data silos and achieve the free flow of information.
During the development of TRON, Justin Sun cleverly incorporated the concept of Bitcoin into it. However, compared with Bitcoin's "conservativeness", Justin Sun is obviously more innovative. In just one year, the TRON mainnet was successfully launched and a number of innovative technologies were introduced, such as the DPoS consensus mechanism and the TVM virtual machine, which greatly improved the performance and scalability of TRON and provided users with a safer, more transparent and efficient user experience.
In terms of industry enthusiasm, Justin Sun and Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin have many similarities. Both of them were exposed to Bitcoin in the early days and keenly aware of its huge potential. After that, they continued to pay attention to the development of industry technology and actively promoted technological innovation, community building, and the formulation of industry technical standards. Justin Sun is not only a firm believer in the future of cryptocurrency, but also a builder of infrastructure for the cryptocurrency industry.
For example, TRON has launched a number of industry initiatives to promote industry self-discipline and standardized development, including strengthening support for TRON inscriptions, accelerating the integration of TRON and BRC20, and launching a $100 million TRON Developer Fund to encourage innovation and reduce energy costs to attract more developers and users to use TRON. Regarding crypto regulation, Justin Sun also actively participated in international exchanges to promote the global development of the cryptocurrency industry. He called on governments and regulators to adopt a more open attitude towards cryptocurrencies, helping the international community to improve its understanding of cryptocurrencies and promoting the understanding and acceptance of cryptocurrencies by governments and regulators.
Of course, the road to development is not smooth, but in the face of external doubts and smears, Justin Sun always maintains a frank and confident attitude, sticks to his original intention, and constantly proves himself with practical actions. He firmly believes in the future of blockchain technology and is committed to promoting TRON to become the world's leading blockchain platform. As Justin Sun said in response to previous negative news:
“After ten years of entrepreneurship, I have become indifferent to so-called injustice and unfairness. I deeply understand how heavy my responsibilities are. Are user assets 100% safe? Is Huobi 100% margined? Is the daily transfer of 200 million users of TRON smooth and decentralized? Is it safe enough? Money is more like a part of order, an order that requires a lot of time and effort to defend. I also deeply understand the serious consequences of disorder in the financial field, and blockchain will be a better financial order for mankind.”
Today, as a top public chain, TRON plays an important role in industry construction. Its secure, stable and efficient underlying technical support facilitates encryption development. At the same time, it also provides financial, technical, operational and other support through ecological funds and incubators to help the encryption ecosystem grow and develop. It also actively cooperates with other blockchain projects and institutions to jointly promote the development of related technologies and the implementation of their applications.
Summarize
Sun Yuchen's "αβγ" three-stage strategy provides a clear roadmap for TRON to enter the Bitcoin L2 field. The successful implementation of this strategy will have a significant impact on the development of the TRON ecosystem and the Bitcoin ecosystem. Obviously, the strong on-chain ecological value will promote the smooth implementation of the TRON Bitcoin L2 roadmap plan and drive the entire industry to return to the original intention of blockchain and encryption technology. At the same time, TRON also needs to overcome technical difficulties, improve product competitiveness and actively respond to changes in the regulatory environment. Only in this way can its position as a leading public chain be further consolidated.
The successful seizing of the Bitcoin L2 trend is undoubtedly a full reflection of Justin Sun's keen market insight and strong resource integration capabilities based on his many years of industry experience. With the start of a new round of bull market, TRON is bound to gain greater room for development, bring more value to the industry, and play a more important role in the development of the global blockchain.
