Is TRON's Sun Network a marketing gimmick? Comparisons with Ethereum and EOS metrics

On Aug. 11, TRON announced a new version for the Sun Network, a scaling solution that would expand the network's transaction capacity.

"Sun Network will contribute to a more active ecosystem of TRON In addition, a series of scaling projects such as DAppChain and cross-chain communications will further expand the overall capacity of the TRON network, as well as improving the TPS and smart contract execution efficiency on TRON.".

Considering how often these metrics are used to promote TRON and the Sun Network it's important to look at the hard data.

For marketing purposes, Justin Sun and the TRON Foundation have a history of making comparisons to the leading smart contract protocol, Ethereum.

In July 2018, Justin Sun boasted that the TRON network is 80 times faster than Ethereum, implying a network speed of 1,200 TPS. In June, TRON claimed to have a TPS of 2,000.

At its peak, the TRON network was using conducting less than 6 million transactions in a 24-hour interval-just 6 percent of the network's maximum capacity.

Overall, it seems that the metrics the TRON Foundation selects and presents, along with its protocol upgrades, are-as expected-more marketing hype than anything else.

In terms of total transactions, it's unlikely that Ethereum will outperform more centralized systems like TRON and EOS, which can drive down costs by centralizing computer resources- even with sharding-by nature of how distributed networks are bottlenecked by the number of participating nodes.

Recently, the Tron CEO promised to limit the "Overmarketing" of Tron in a now-deleted apology.

More than anything else, Justin Sun's eponymous scaling solution seems like another piece of marketing meant to position TRON as a viable alternative to Ethereum and Bitcoin.