Cryptocurrency, TRON (TRX)–With the crypto markets showing a moderate amount of price stability in the final week of 2018, after falling nearly $700 billion in market capitalization throughout the year, coin projects are consolidating and focusing on growth for 2019.
TRON, in particular, is in the position to expand beyond its current limitations through the industry of gaming.
Since first gaining traction through a strategic partnership with blockchain gaming portal Game.com, the TRON Foundation and the TRX currency have been the premier project for advancing the interest of gaming through cryptocurrency. The white paper for TRON, while controversial and criticized, outlined the project as a platform that would tackle the landscape of digital entertainment, with gaming being one of the more prominent and approachable avenues for cryptocurrency to infiltrate.
The potential for TRON gaming increased midway through the year, with the announcement that TRON founder Justin Sun had acquired BitTorrent in a wholesale purchase of Rainberry, Inc., giving the budding TRX Main Net access to the 170 million user base affiliated with the filesharing service. While BitTorrent is not as direct of a route to gaming as the Game.com partnership, it does present a significant overlap in consumer bases, with the torrenting crowd finding a like-minded interest in the decentralized money of cryptocurrency. Project Atlas, which is being designed to further integrate BitTorrent on the TRON platform while providing greater incentive for torrenters to participate on the network, could also deepen the relationship between the two platforms.
However the announcement of TRON Arcade, as reported by EWN at the end of November, gives a clear indication of the direction for the TRON Foundation in next year and beyond, or at least provide some focus for the currency’s development and investor base. According to the press release at the time, the TRON Foundation will be paying out $100 million over the next three years to spur innovation in blockchain gaming on the TRON platform, while also providing a strong incentive for gaming developers to integrate TRX into their creations.
Justin Sun characterized the announcement as “crucial” for the growth of the currency and crypto gaming, going on to expand upon TRON’s role in the broader sphere of digital entertainment,
“TRON strives to tackle existing issues faced by the gaming industry by leveraging the open, transparent, and immutability of blockchain technology. TRON Arcade will play a crucial role in encouraging developers to join in our mission and provide the best blockchain gaming experience to users around the world.”
With the market still reeling from the deep bear correction of 2018, gaming provides an outlet for TRON to hinge upon and expand in the interim period of recovery. The TRON Foundation and Justin Sun may seek to tackle the megalith of digital entertainment, but with gaming, it may not be necessary to reinvent the wheel. TRON only has to find a way to improve upon the current landscape through the TRX coin in order to incentivize greater investment interest and development for the coin. E-sports, in particular, are projected to surpass $1 billion in global revenue next year, showing an industry that is both experiencing explosive growth and ripe for the input of a technology like crypto.
