TRON founder, Justin Sun Reveals that He will be the Next to Go to Space

Earlier this year, in June, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos offered seats in his rocket ship several highest bidders, with one of the anonymous bidders being willing to pay over $28 million in order to go to space. Now, six months later, Tron’s founder Justin Sun revealed that the extremely high bid was his.

While Sun did outbid 2,600 other people in a rush to secure a seat on Bezos’ spaceship, he could not make the trip due to some scheduling conflicts. The details were not revealed, but the announcement made on December 22nd revealed that Sun will have his opportunity to go to space in 2022. Not only that, but he will also pay for five additional crew members who would join him.

The new plan was made possible in agreement with Bezos’ Blue Origin, although the cost of the ticket was not disclosed. The trip to space will be done with Blue Origin’s suborbital rocket called the New Shepard, which has room for six astronauts. The rocket was tested multiple times, and it has three successful space launches behind it.

Sun is now expected to nominate five men and women who would travel with him, and Tron’s CEO will likely do so in the coming months. The trip itself will last for around 11 minutes, and it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the world in a way that only a handful of people did in entire human history.

Who gets to go to space?

Sun has been known to participate in similar high-priced auctions in the past. Many still remember his participation in 2019, when he won a dinner with Warren Buffett, which he saw as an opportunity to try and help Buffett gain a better understanding of cryptocurrencies. While the dinner was originally canceled, it did take place in 2020, when Sun was joined by a handful of other crypto entrepreneurs.

Now, however, Sun will have to organize another crew that will accompany him, not into a restaurant, but into space. To that extent, he is launching a campaign called Sea of Stars, which will result in deciding who gets to join his crew. Each nominee will be an outstanding leader in his or her field, according to the announcement, and that can include anything from fashion to technology, entrepreneurship to space exploration, and more.

The details of the process will also be announced in months to come, but the announcement did hint that the nominees may include members of the TRON DAO community “comprising long-term holders of TRX, BTT, JST, SUN, NFT, and WIN.”

While the prospect is exciting, many still remember the last time when Sun tried to pick a winner from the TRON holders. Back then, he promised that one lucky winner would be gifted a Tesla, but Sun allegedly botched the selection process, and the community never forgot about it.

Another thing worth noting is that Sun recently revealed that he will step down from actively managing the Tron Foundation, but also that his trip to space has neither financial nor commercial ties to the Foundation. He will pay for the tickets from his own pocket, and while Blue Origin will act as his “advisor on the space flight,” the decision regarding who will go to space with him will be Sun’s to make.

To learn more about Tron, visit our Investing in Tron guide.