Tron, the blockchain launched in 2017 by former Ripple devotee Justin Sun, has entered a strategic alliance with custody specialists BitGo.
The partnership will bring wrapped bitcoin (WBTC) and BitGo’s newly-minted Wrapped Ether into the Tron ecosystem as TRC-20 tokens. (Both are ERC-20 tokens backed 1:1 by bitcoin and ether, respectively, and held at BitGo Trust, a qualified custodian in the U.S.)
The introduction of WBTC and Wrapped Ether are to help fuel the incipient decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem on Tron. WBTC has been a key driver in the growth of DeFi on Ethereum.
Tron founder Sun said the move would help sidestep prohibitively high gas fees on the Ethereum blockchain. “Everyone may now use their BTC/ETH to enjoy all the benefits of the Tron DeFi ecosystem without the high gas fees on Ethereum,” Sun said in a statement.
Sun also pointed to a service similar to Uniswap on Tron called JustSwap, which he said has achieved $100 million 24-hour volumes since it was launched about a month ago.
BitGo CEO Mike Belshe said WBTC has seen tremendous growth in concert with the boom in DeFi.
“Our new strategic alliance with Tron creates even greater opportunities for users to expand to other chains and tokenize their BTC on the Tron dApp ecosystem while transacting at a lower cost and faster speed,” Belshe said in a statement.
