One year and nearly $3 billion later, the Tron blockchain is set to finally put its much-debated technology to the test.

At least, that's what should happen Monday, when Tron completes the token swap it began last week, migrating the last of its users' funds from ethereum to a new proprietary blockchain. For investors, the moment marks a historic "independence day" of sorts, but it could more broadly become a make-or-break moment for the project, which though controversial, already finds itself among the top cryptocurrencies globally.

Founded last July, Tron has set out to "decentralize the internet." However, the project has yet to rigorously define what this means in practice.

And while Tron's rhetoric may seemingly resemble that of many cryptocurrencies that emerged from 2017's token boom, the project is distinguished by the size of its funding and the outspokenness of its founder, former Ripple representative Justin Sun, who last week caused a stir in the tech world by purchasing the company behind file-sharing service BitTorrent.