Baidu and Tron Partnership Exposed, Merely Purchasing Cloud Computing Resources as TRX Investors Seek Clarity

Baidu/Tron Partnership Exposed As A Purchase Of Cloud Computing, Leading Investors To Believe They Were Misled By Justin Sun And Tron

On October 12^th, Tron founder Justin Sun teased his community with a new venture, saying, “Finally, first time to partner with tens of billions USD valuation industry giant. Guess the name.” It didn’t take long to get the industry talking, and they ultimately decided amongst themselves that China’s version of Google, Baidu, had to be it.

Later that day, a news website posted the following headline: “Exclusive: Tron to Cooperate with China’s IT Giant Baidu. The Tron team told CoinNess that a partnership had been confirmed between Tron and China’s IT giant Baidu, which will be officially revealed by Baidu Cloud next week.”

Right now, the Chinese media is reporting a much different story, saying that the alleged partnership is just about a purchase involving the platform’s cloud computing. On Twitter, cnLedger posted about this agreement over a series of posts, reporting the information available from ODaily. They said:

1/ ODaily: The 'partnership' between Baidu and Tron is basically about Tron buying cloud computing resources from Baidu. "The two parties have made no contact at the blockchain business level".

Source(CN): https://t.co/GXu0KsbtGX

— cnLedger (@cnLedger) October 15, 2018

In the meantime, it seems that the agreement says that Tron “will build, operate and debug blockchain products based on Baidu Cloud in order to ensure compatibility and optimize development experience. However, Baidu and Tron have not yet formed any connection at the blockchain business level.”

2/ According to the ODaily: recently, Baidu Cloud and Tron have reached cooperation in the field of basic cloud business. Tron will build, operate and debug blockchain products based on Baidu Cloud in order to ensure compatibility and optimize development experience.

— cnLedger (@cnLedger) October 15, 2018

4/ Baidu will actively provide their blockchain solution w/ their soon-to-release blockchain commercialization super partner plan v1.0. The plan is about tech exploration and revenue sharing with their commercial 'super partners' using Baidu's 'out-of-the-box' blockchain solution

— cnLedger (@cnLedger) October 15, 2018

Right now, it doesn’t seem that this exposure is being met with a positive outlook. Ari Paul, a hedge fund manager in the financial industry, took to Twitter and said, “Ari Paul Retweeted cnLedger

I inked a partnership with Dunkin Donuts this morning.

— nic carter (@nic__carter) October 15, 2018

Assuming the below is accurate, this deserves to be called out as misleading marketing. If I buy a computer with Microsoft Windows installed, I should not claim to have partnered with Microsoft without clarifying the limited nature of the ‘partnership.’” Paul linked his post with the one from cnLedger, using it as a response.

Some websites choose to see the silver lining in this situation. Rather than harping on the way that Tron has essentially deceived the community, Trust Nodes has joked that at least they haven’t done the same things that they’ve done before to get ahead, like when they were accused of copying IPFS’s whitepaper, or copying the EVM of Ethereum.