This might turn into quite a long comment, sorry, haha.
There's no point developing two different chains when they can focus on one and leverage its network effects. The other option is just leaving Steem as is, but then it's going to keep going on the slow death spiral it has been on since 2017.
I'm unsure about the first part for one main reason: surely Tron already had the resources (people and funding) to create their own token system which is similar to Steem. They could've built something from that ground up that could've rivalled Steem in many ways. An interesting question to have from this is whether Tron actually needs us, or if we need them.
I feel the answer is quite even. They probably need us as much as we need the investment and PR. This brings me to the next part:
There's no point developing two different chains when they can focus on one and leverage its network effects.
It obviously entirely depends on what's planned, but having two separate chains could be mutually beneficial. With existing users on Steem, building this chain and finding ways to connect Steemit's front-end to Tron could grow two individual market caps in an industry that's largely sticking to individual ones. Take their acquisition of BitTorent and the implementation of a TRC10 token: it's practically dead.
With Steem not becoming a TRC shittoken and remaining independent (ignoring minor features that connect to Tron and its ecosystem in some way, strictly referring to independence as Steem staying on its own chain) then Justin has the leverage to push one positive over the negatives from a marketing aspect. It also allows for a plethora of announcements that benefit both chains.
Another thing that comes to attention is that surely there'd be little point in releasing more features to Steem: communities, SMTs, etc, if the plan is to ultimately kill it off and start from scratch.
I do have a few more things that could be said, but I think I'll just throw in some bullet points. With one final thing: I think Justin isn't entirely aware as to what he now owns. I think he has a rough idea, but not one large enough to fully understand what it's capable of and who really is in control. Those are questions the community is asking as well.
- Community could just up and leave for the most part leaving Justin with a front-end and no clue of direction.
- Community could easily begin to show what would be beneficial for both chains in an independent manner.
- Investment into Steem could be huge, which follows the above bullet-point (fairly obvious statement to make, I know).
- Even with hostile takeover concepts in mind, the core Steemit devs could get some thoughts in regarding what's generally a good or bad idea.
- This lack of information thus far really sucks.
There's no way to sugarcoat this - Tron is a massive, $1.5 billion project, hovering in and around the top 15. Meanwhile, Steem is a failing project that has dropped from the top 10 to barely hanging on to top 100. Indeed, were it not for the Tron acquisition rumours, it'd have dropped out EOY 2019. I have noticed way overinflated opinion of Steem by bagholders, and its frankly delusional. In the wide crypto community, Steem is universally thought of as a once promising project that is failing through mismanagement and poor development. So, yeah, the answer is Tron >>>>>>> Steem, it's not even close.
Steem will be integrated intro Tron, though the timing and nature of it remains uncertain. I bet it's going to take a couple of years, but they'll figure it out. I'm not entirely familiar with Tron, but one thing's for sure, they have an order of magnitude more developers than Steemit Inc ever did.