TRON founder Justin Sun has officially announced the launch date of TRON 4.0 via their Medium channel. In an open letter to the community, Justin Sun confirmed the launch of the mainnet as the 7th of July 2020.
This is the fourth transformation for the highly controversial blockchain having launched its original mainnet in June 2018.
According to the TRON Foundation, the upgrade will bring various key features to TRON users and developers.
It now contains the first smart contract privacy protocol known as TRONZ’s Smart Contract Privacy Protocol. Which utilizes the zk-SNARKS protocol and has the support of a Virtual Machine.
Currently, and as stated by TRON, this is the safest and most productive protocol. Other features include the TPOS Dual-Layer Consensus Mechanism and a brand new TICP cross-chain protocol.
Further describing TRON 4.0. The TRON Foundation says that it is not just about building dapps but more about becoming an onramp for users and financial institutions.
The TRON Foundation briefly explains TRON 4.0 in these words:
“TRON 4.0 is not only the manifestation of the TRON “Decentralize the Web” vision but also the building of financial infrastructure for the next generation. It will not only be the first choice for small and medium developers when building DApps but will also become THE gateway for financial institutions and enterprise users to enter the world of blockchain. TRON 4.0 is not only about DApps, but also about Decentralized Finance.”
Ethereums DeFi dominance
The growing DeFi dapps ecosystem has mainly found its home on the Ethereum Blockchain but with the launch of JUST and Zethyr Finance, TRON has thrown their hat into the mix. Having seen tremendous growth and interest in the sector. Justin Sun correctly looked to rectify TRONs weak presence in the space with the introduction of JUST and Zethyr.
At the time of writing a quick glance at the top 15 DeFi dapps as tracked by DappRadar ranked by volume over 7-days. Reveals Ethereums clear dominance of the space.
TRON has 3 dapps within the top 15 DeFi category. JUST, Zethyr Finance, and Oikos.cash but even if you add the volumes of all three together over 7-days ($27.3k) they don’t even scratch the surface of the 10th placed Ethereum dapp Fulcrum, with a volume of almost $125k.
11 of the 15 dapps in the top 15 run on the Ethereum Blockchain (73%). But, it’s not as clear cut as that when we start looking at user data.
Early signs are quite positive for the TRON finance dapps as they display growing user numbers. When we observe the data ranked by users over a 7-day period. JUST ranks in 8th position with a respectable user number at the time of writing of 826.
Although, it is worth noting that when observing DeFi dapps that user data is not the most important metric. Due to how users interact with DeFi dapps being completely different from dapp games, for example.
Can TRON 4.0 challenge Ethereum 2.0
For a long time, Justin Sun and Vitalik Buterin have gone head to head in a war of words and development when it comes to who is the most dominant blockchain. To any educated outsider, it’s quite clear to see that Ethereum is dominant.
A portion of this dominance can be attributed to a few early mover advantages as Ethereum was the first blockchain developers could deploy dapps onto. This means the support systems offered to developers in the Ethereum ecosystem far outweigh the support in the TRON ecosystem. And recent events surrounding TRON’s hostile takeover of Steem, consequently causing the Hive hard fork, has not helped the blockchain gain any favor.
This has led to more and more developers choosing Ethereum as their home. But it is also worth noting that Ethereum is not without its own issues.
ETH 2.0 is on its way
A big topic of discussion in 2020 so far has been Ethereum 2.0. The upgrade is aimed at scalability but will also bring in Proof-of-Stake, or PoS, consensus — calling on asset holders, called stakes, for network validation instead of miners.
But, unlike Justin Sun and TRON, Recent comments from ETH 2.0 testnet coordinator, Afri Schoedon, gave no firm launch date for the endeavor.
Go deeper
For a deeper analysis and comparison of the finance dapps offered on TRON check out our recent article “Will TRON become JUST another competitor to Ethereums DeFi”
As always DappRadar will continue to monitor the space and report on the TRON 4.0 mainnet launch as it occurs. It will also be fascinating to observe how Ethereums own upgrade to 2.0 will play out.
Make sure you bookmark DappRadar and sign up to our newsletter below to receive regular updates direct to your inbox.
Newsletter 
