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On Monday (May 13), Lucien (Chinese name: “Zhiqiang”) Chen, who claims that he was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at TRON Foundation until May 10, said that the accusations levelled against him by Justin Sun were false, and promised to take legal action if the TRON Foundation CEO “slanders” him again.

Lucien Announces His Departure From TRON Foundation 

It all started on May 10, when Lucien published a post on the Medium blog for a new blockchain startup called Volume Network, which apparently he has founded recently and where he is currently the CEO. 

Here are some of the main points from Lucien’s blog post:

  • Two years ago, he had joined TRON Foundation as CTO.  Furthermore, he said that he and Justin were co-founders of TRON.
  • He was leaving his position at TRON Foundation on May 10, the day that this post was published.
  • The reason for his departure was to “rebuild a new TRON” and he had decided to call this new blockchain project “Volume Network”.
  • Because of “irreconcilable” differences between him and Justin, today’s TRON is not what he had in mind when he first joined the company.
  • The reasons for his disillusionment are as follows:
    • Voting in TRON is centralized. To explain what he means, he says that while the “total number of TRX in TRON is 100 billion,” the “total number of votes for the super representatives is just less than 8 billion.”
    • “TRON is not associated with the Internet.” He is unhappy that the TRON ecosystem is most made up of gambling-related decentralized applications (DApps) and very few “commercial applications.”
    • “TRON has deviated from the spirit and original intention of the blockchain.” In short, he feels that while the “spirit of the blockchain” is all about decentralization, almost every aspect of TRON is currently far too centralized. 
  • He wants Volume Network to be “a real community project.”

TRON Foundation’s Accusations Against Lucien

On May 12, Reddit user “pochacod” posted what he said was an official response that he managed to get from TRON Foundation regarding Lucien’s claims; he posted this on a Reddit thread called “Lucien Chen Megathread”:

“According to the inspection department of TRON, former employees Z. Chen, J. Zhu, and X. Xie are suspected of misappropriation of funds, bribery, competitive infringement, and theft of trade secrets and intellectual property. Chen, Zhu, and Xie were dismissed in January, 2019 for violation of corporate policies and the law. Relevant documents and materials have been handed over to the judiciary. Z. Chen joined TRON in October, 2017 not as a co-founder but rather a technical leader.”

Then, on May 13, Coindesk reported that Justin himself had expressed similar words via his Weibo account. More specifically, the translated text of Justin’s post mentions that Lucien (“Z. Chen”) was “an ordinary employee on the technical side and was not a co-founder,” even though on 2 June 2018, Justin had posted a tweet referring to Lucin as TRON’s CTO:

Lucien’s Response to Justin’s Accusations of Wrongdoings

On May 13, Lucien published a second blog post on Volume Network’s Medium’s account to respond to Justin’s accusations.

Lucien says that:

  • He was “really surprised” to hear that he was neither the former CTO of TRON Foundation nor its co-founder.
  • He had left Alibaba “after much plea from Justin persuading me to join the team for 5–6 years as the CTO and co-founder of Tron.network.”
  • Justin’s accusations of “embezzlement” and “taking of bribes” are “image damaging” and he “won’t take it likely” the next that he is “slandered in this manner. “

Featured Image Courtesy of Lucien Chen