EDIT: We forgot almost the most important point which is now included in the article but posted below in case you already read the full article...
What caused the decline in the first place? The TRON whitepaper of all things-- some sources on Twitter "outed" the whitepaper as a "cut & paste" copy of other previous work, and then Charles Lee chimed-in with a retweet of that "outing" and TRON's demise began. We're not saying TRON is a fraud or anything; after all, Charles Lee himself copied almost ALL of bitcoin so he's really not one to talk (and he should remember that). However, a sniff of underhandedness is something cryptocurrencies which just rose 1,000% don't take kindly. In our view, the rise and drop in TRON is more indicative of a trend in cryptoworld for 2018, than the drop is an indictment of TRON. What do we mean by that?
Not sure plagiarizing a whitepaper (TRON) and branching off open source code (Charlie Lee & Litecoin) are the same thing or even remotely close.
in the regular world, sure, they might be different, perhaps legally. But when you boil it right down, people in Silicon Valley are copying LOTS of stuff, and always have. Lots of the copying doesn't require a patent, just ask Steve Jobs and his mouse. Another example is the employee who left Google's Waymo division and copied the code for self-driving cars and took it to his next gig. maybe he WROTE the code and felt justified?
Charles Lee piggybacked off Bitcoin; we have a ton of respect for how he conducts himself (until proven otherwise), but bottom line is he's no Satoshi. Lots of credit should go to the guy who had the guts, execution and courage to start it all. Charles Lee is nothing more than a "pilot fish" living off the scraps of the great unknown shark. Nothing wrong with that, we just don't put 100% stock in his criticisms, even if we agree with them (TRON) at first.
Keep an open mind!