Tron’s largest decentralised exchange acquired by Poloniex

TRXMarket, the largest decentralised exchange by volume on the Tron network, has been bought out by Poloniex for an undisclosed amount.

Poloniex is one of the oldest cryptocurrency exchanges in the space having launched in 2014. It was previously part of crypto payments processor Circle before the companies split earlier this year.

The TRXMarket team shared in a Medium post on Wednesday that the exchange had been acquired and announced a full rebrand of the site.

The new exchange is called PoloniDEX and has already changed its web address to ‘poloniex.org’. The TRXMarket team says that users can still visit the original domain and all users’ funds are protected.

TRXMarket, already renamed PoloniDEX on Twitter, shared the news in a tweet:

In an official announcement, the TRXMarket team shared:

“To maintain the development of TRXMarket over the long term, the team has accepted an acquisition offer from Poloniex, and will rebrand with the new name PoloniDEX, becoming a decentralised exchange under Poloniex.”

Justin Sun, founder and CEO of Tron, tweeted:

TRXMarket is the most important exchange for TRC-20 tokens, which are utility tokens for decentralised applications (dApps) built on top of the Tron blockchain.

Similar to ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum, TRC-20 tokens power Tron’s dApps and use Tron’s native token, TRX, as gas. TRXMarket fills a similar role to that of Ethereum’s IDEX exchange.

Sun said of the acquisition:

“I’m very pleased to see that our strategic partner Poloniex successfully acquired TRXMarket, the top DEX in the community. It’s not only a move to expand the DeFi ecosystem, but also represents a starting point of TRON receiving recognition from world-leading exchanges.”

Strategic move by Sun

Justin Sun shared during a live stream earlier this month that he had made an undisclosed investment in Poloniex, although there was little indication that TRXMarket would be acquired by the exchange at the time.

Sun shared with his followers that he had a financial interest in Poloniex shortly after the exchange announced that it would be listing TRX with three pairings.

The acquisition comes as part of Tron’s wider move towards fully decentralised infrastructure, which includes the acquisition of the peer-to-peer file sharing network BitTorrent.

This latest move will grow Poloniex’s role in the Tron ecosystem, although Poloniex still operates as a separate entity.