TRON Launches ‘Meme’ Coin to Kick-Start Value

But is this just another marketing gimmick, or is there money to be made?

SUN Day, SUN Day

Sun Genesis Mining is almost here. Justin Sun announced in a Medium article that users could soon stake their Tron (TRX) through a particular smart contract. The entire project will be community-derived from the beginning, and the reward will come in the form of different coins. The earlier a user stakes their TRX, the more rewards they will get (starting with a 10% bonus). To sum up the ethos of SUN mining, TRON founder Justin Sun introduced the concept like so,

Designed as the quintessential Bitcoin equivalent on the TRON network, SUN features zero venture capital (VC) investments, zero private equity investments, no pre-mining or reserves for the team, and is wholly operated by the community through its open-source smart contracts. We want to build SUN into a grand social experiment while paying tribute to the spirit of decentralization as advocated by Satoshi Nakamoto.

In the Medium letter, Sun underlines the value of community governance in the new project. He hopes that projects like Maker DAO, Compound, and yEARN.finance, all community-led, could find surrogates on Tron’s DeFi network. Perhaps this gives a sense of what SUN is really about. After all, there’s no lack of community/DeFi projects around. SUN could be more than just a meme coin launched for all the right reasons. How could Sun not dream of a coin based on TRON that would “pull a YFI” and 1000x in just a month?

TRX could pull a YFI here. No Premin, No ICO, No angel investor ? We love this kinda 5hit sir! Thank you.

— Corn Longer (@_BearSlayer_) August 31, 2020

The Facts

The gist of SUN, however, is as follows: SUN Genesis Mining will start on September 2, 2020. On September 16, the coin will be officially launched during what Tron calls “SUN Day.” The total supply will be 19,900,730. The 14 days between staking and launch will allow TRON users to stake their coins, which will be returned at a full refund. From there, the project will continue with different staking rules and additional rewards but will be community-driven. Often praised for his marketing prowess, Justin Sun is piggybacking on the already popular world of DeFi staking. If more people are staking their TRX and awaiting rewards, TRX would theoretically become more scarce, and like magic, the price could rise from now till SUN Day. But is this more than just a gimmick in the hopes of increasing Tron’s price?

Self-Mockery to the Rescue

Sun’s announcement is self-deprecating enough to warrant lightness. As Mr. Sun says, Tron respects and appreciates, “Crypto culture featuring humor and self-mockery.” And he describes the community’s irony as,

a critical source of power that continuously drives the spirited adoption of cryptocurrency.

Not only did yEARN.finance grow an incredible hundred times since inception, but Binance recently added futures for the incredibly popular token. Let’s not forget that the token “does nothing” and has, according to founder Andre Cronje, no value. Some levity may drive this project. But if nothing else, big money is involved.

Meme for the Sake of Meme

Some meme projects that exist to drive adoption have already been put forward. Banano coin, a fork of Nano, does everything that Nano can but is, naturally, banana themed. And, of course, there is Dogecoin, which has a market cap of about half a billion dollars and still does nothing.

But there are a few meme-driven coins that, though humorous, still prove that empty promises can bring gains. There is Shrimp finance (SHRIMP) that has staking pools of…shrimp, and $TACO, which is taco themed. Let us not forget the $MEME coin, a coin powered by meme energy. In fact, MEME aims to take all the ‘valueless’ buzz words from meme coins and make them worth something. The website URL “dontbuymeme.com” says it all. But despite warning that the coin is just a gimmick, it’s up over 400% since it was listed on Coingecko. With a market cap of around $5 million, there must be something to it.

Though transparent, the SUN token does not appear to do anything special. By making Genesis Mining public and community a priority, it’s begging for attention. But whether the SUN token has any intrinsic value, other than to kick-start a TRON-based DeFi craze, remains unclear. To be fair, Justin Sun’s letter is open and honest about the hijacking of buzz words to create, well, buzz. The value in jumping on the DeFi crazy gains wagon is evident to anyone who’s been watching the crypto market. There’s no reason TRON shouldn’t come along for the ride.