Tron courts controversy with Tesla giveaway debacle

• Controversy erupted when the winner of the giveaway was apparently scammed out of his Tesla after Tron decided to do another draw and crown another winner.
• To defuse the situation, Tron CEO Justin Sun decided to giveaway two Teslas instead.

Justin Sun had earlier announced a $20 million free cash airdrop that included a Tesla for one follower. The idea was to celebrate the success of BitTorrent (BTT), and the addition of USDT on Tron later this year.

However, controversy erupted when the winner, who goes by the Twitter handle “@zugaroth” announced that he was being scammed out of the Tesla. Apparently, the Tron team decided to do another draw and get another winner. They said that they opted for the second draw and do it live on video to enhance transparency.

As expected, this caused widespread outrage. “@zugaroth” stated the following to CCN:

“I feel outraged because apparently, he will not keep his word. Immediately the public that I was the winner sent my contact data to the inbox of Justin Sun but I never had an answer.”

The same to the inbox of TRON Foundation. The next day they just made another draw and they chose another winner without even apologizing to me for what happened. It is a pity that for me it is a very good project to disappoint your followers like me with false promises.”

I feel insulted and sad, everything seems to be a lie.”

Sun responded to the outrage by tweeting:

“However, I do recognize that this is an unfortunate situation, and would like to extend my warmest welcome to the next #niTROn summit in 2020, including a fully paid round-trip ticket to the event location. We are very grateful for your continued support. #TRON”

This tweet was poorly received with even more scathing criticism online. To defuse the situation, Sun announced that he will be giving away two Teslas:

“To bring awareness to the blockchain community, keep fostering transparency, reliability & openness in our values, I decided to offer two Tesla! Congratulations @uzgaroth & @LeoHuynhPro thanks for believing in our mission.”

To explain what happened, Sun released a blog post where he said:

“On Twitter, the team used a tweet randomizer tool because Twitter does not have an official drawing mechanism. The team was unfamiliar with the tool and performed a number of test draws to understand how it worked, which has led to some misunderstandings about how we did what we did. We also were unaware there would be concern about the video not being live-streamed and that it would create ambiguity and controversy.

To address those concerns, I decided to create a live-streamed draw to show we are open about everything we do. The person picked in that draw has already contacted us and will receive the Tesla. I’ve also decided to give a Tesla to @uzgaroth.

I spent many hours thinking of ways to show how blockchain and the newly launched TRON stablecoin will be a game-changer for both consumers and businesses. I take that seriously; we will more than likely have a few setbacks along the way. The team has taken some learnings from this, and we are more than happy to collaborate with Twitter and third-party developers to have good mechanisms to select winners (maybe even powered by blockchain technology!)”

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