The whole cryptocurrency market has been witnessing a steep downward trend for the past couple of weeks. Even the major cryptocurrency like Bitcoin [BTC], Ethereum [ETH] and XRP, have lost the battle against the ice king. This negative trend has broken down most of the new projects in the market, especially the investors’ sentiments. There are also a few projects and team that are finding it hard to continue their operations because of the bear’s ever-growing presence.

Despite this, Tron [TRX], the tenth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, continues to make advancements in terms of network development. Justin Sun, the founder and CEO of Tron Foundation presented the second proposal, Proposal 9, has been approved by 2/3rd of the governing body. The proposal is aimed at making the network a developer friendly environment by reducing the energy cost from 20 sun to 10 sun, which, in turn, reduces the cost of smart contact.

Justin Sun’s tweet on the proposal | Source: Twitter

At the time of writing, the proposal had received 22 approvals and no disapprovals. The representatives who voted for the proposal includes Justin Sun Tron, Tron Society, BitGuild, Tron One, Lianjinshu, uTorrent, Crypto Guy in ZA, Infinity Stones, Alle Exchange, Tron Alliance, TronWalletMe, Raybo Tron, BitTorrent, Blockchain Org, CryptoChain, Sesameseed, callmeSR, DApp House, Tron Spark, TRX Market, Sky people, and Tron Europe.

The first proposal of the month was related to maximizing the energy limit of the network, which was also aimed at supporting the developers of the ecosystem. The proposal was approved by all 28 Super Representatives of the network. Super Representative are the representatives of the community and validators of the node who are elected by the token holders. These representatives are given the power to vote for the activation of the features of the Tron Virtual Machine, with the focus on the betterment of the entire community.

Earlier today, the CEO of the Foundation spoke about how Tron surpassed Stellar Lumens, the fourth largest cryptocurrency by market cap. He said on Twitter:

“According to @CoinMarketCap, there are 159 trading pairs of #TRON which already surpassed 157 trading pairs of Stellar. #TRX was already listed on more than 100 exchanges, including Crypto/Crypto & Crypto/ Fiat trading pairs”

Monero’s lead developer, Riccardo Spagni aka fluffypony, spoke about Basic Attention Token [BAT], elucidating why he considers it to be centralized in the latest episode of Magical Crypto Friends.

Basic Attention Token is the digital currency used for rewarding content publishers and users for paying attention to the content, a break-through in the digital advertising sector. This also provides advertisers with more in return for their advertisements. For the very same purpose, Brave Browser browser monitors the users’ attention, while ensuring that the data does not leave the users device.

However, the Spagni stated it has a loophole on Twitter:

“I just found out that BAT has a nice loophole that lets them steal funds from users. Permissionless scamovation indeed! […] Users are NOT going to go & buy BAT when their airdropped tokens run out, no matter how slick. There’s simply too much friction. Consider what happens RIGHT NOW when most people hit a paywall: do they (1) disable their ad blocker, (2) pay the publisher, or (3) just close the tab?”

This was followed by a Twitterati, Patrick, stating that the BAT ecosystem is designed to work in manner wherein the advertisers purchase the tokens and then use them to buy advertising space on the browser. He further stated that users will earn 70% share of the revenue if they agree to view the ads, adding that they will be paid in BAT for their attention and can tip this BAT to their preferred content producers.

To which, Spagni said:

“I understand that part of it, and I think it’s safe to disregard it as (1) it’s going to be gamed making it a race to the bottom for ordinary users, & (2) very few people want to see a plethora of ads even if they’re getting paid. I also think the browser lock-in is shortsighted.”

To counter this statement, Patrick attached a tweet of Brendan Eich, the co-founder and CEO fo Brave, wherein he has remarked that Brave uses Uphold for KYC/AML process, which is required for users to be able to withdraw their funds. This is so that “the threat is DoS not theft by fraud”.

The founder added that they make use of Proof of Browsing and “buffering on the device and in a settlement, allowing anti-fraud/Sybil attack analysis and BAT claw-back”.

In the episode, Spagni stated that he found it interesting that it is “a lot more centralized than they purport to be”, adding that this is true when it comes to a lot of dApps. He further stated:

“So I was having this debate on Twitter with a bad show and I said okay but that’s gonna be gained at some point you know someone’s gonna figure out the heuristics and they’re gonna have like right a bunch of bots that are gonna be indistinguishable from real humans […] it’s going to appear to be real browsing and they’re gonna airdrop these tokens onto them”

Following this, Spagni spoke about Proof of Browsing, which will determine whether the ‘attention’ is true or not, whether it is a  human or a bot, and callback if a person is taking advantage of the system. The developer stated that if a user fails to complete the KYC/AML process and Proof of Browser, then the money is taken back from the user.

“I mean it’s not it’s not yours yet because you haven’t withdrawn it, is their theory but at the end of the day that’s no different from a database because you know they’re controlling everything, they’re controlling the influx of supply into the market, they’re controlling whether or not somebody legitimately earns that […] but the reality is it’s a centralized system”