Tron, the blockchain dominating USDT transfers

The quiet rise of one of crypto’s most successful projects

Originally launched as a public blockchain designed for fast, low-cost transactions, Tron has become one of the world’s leading infrastructures for the circulation of the digital dollar. It currently hosts more than $90 billion in USDT, the stablecoin issued by Tether, and has processed approximately $4.2 trillion in transfers since the beginning of the year, more than any other network worldwide. Its growth has been driven by an architecture designed to ensure speed and predictable costs, the leadership of one of the industry’s most controversial and influential founders, and the growing economic relevance of the TRX token. This operational centrality is now being accompanied by the first signs of integration with traditional finance, through partnerships with payment providers and regulated institutions.

Between adoption and market performance

Around half of all USDT in circulation is held on Tron. With a market capitalisation of approximately $180 billion, Tether’s stablecoin alone accounts for 60% of a market worth a total of $300 billion. This concentration has turned Tron into one of the main infrastructures for the circulation of the digital dollar: the network processes more than 10 million transactions per day, including B2B payments, settlements between exchanges, and remittances to Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Its relevance therefore extends beyond the scale of the crypto ecosystem itself and reflects the role it has assumed in international value transfers, with volumes comparable to those handled by some of the world’s largest traditional payment networks.

The growth of activity on the network is also reflected in financial terms. TRX, Tron’s native token, is used to pay transaction fees, obtain computational resources, and participate in network governance. It currently has a market capitalisation of approximately $31 billion and ranks among the world’s ten largest crypto-assets. Over the past year, it has gained around 10%, while Bitcoin and Ethereum have recorded losses of more than 40%. TRX has therefore emerged as one of the few large-cap assets to follow a partly independent trajectory from the rest of the market, supported by Tron’s growing operational centrality.

What is Tron?

Tron is a public blockchain designed to process fast, low-cost transactions. Founded in 2017, it was initially conceived as a decentralised infrastructure for the distribution of digital content. TRX, the project’s native token, was first launched on Ethereum as an ERC-20 token before being transferred the following year to Tron’s proprietary blockchain. The network uses a delegated proof-of-stake consensus mechanism: 27 validators, known as “Super Representatives” and elected by TRX holders, produce and validate blocks, allowing transactions to reach finality within seconds.

Over time, however, Tron moved away from its original ambition and established itself as an infrastructure for the fast and inexpensive transfer of stablecoins. A central feature of this model is the network’s resource system, which distinguishes between “bandwidth” and “energy”. Bandwidth depends on the amount of data contained in a transaction, while energy measures the computational power required to execute it. USDT transfers, which rely on a smart contract, therefore require more energy than a simple TRX transfer. Users without sufficient resources can lock TRX in advance to obtain them in proportion to the amount committed, thereby avoiding the need to pay a fee for each individual transaction. The mechanism resembles a prepaid subscription and enables high-volume operators, such as exchanges, to make transaction costs predictable and, in many cases, close to zero. This combination of speed, low costs, and predictability has supported Tron’s adoption particularly in emerging markets, where the network has become one of the main infrastructures for transferring tokenised dollars and an increasingly used alternative to traditional remittance systems.

Justin Sun, Tron’s founder

Justin Sun is the central figure in Tron’s history. Before founding the project in 2017, the Chinese entrepreneur had represented Ripple in the Chinese market and created Peiwo, a live-streaming application with more than ten million users. The following year, he expanded the ecosystem by acquiring BitTorrent, the historic file-sharing protocol, for approximately $140 million.

Over the years, Sun has become Tron’s main public face, often achieving greater prominence than the project itself. In March 2023, he was sued by the SEC alongside the Tron Foundation and the BitTorrent Foundation over allegations concerning the sale of unregistered securities and wash trading involving TRX. The proceedings concluded in March 2026 with an agreement that led to the dismissal of the charges against Sun and the two foundations. Rainberry, the company that controls BitTorrent, instead agreed to pay a $10 million penalty related to the wash-trading allegations.

Among Sun’s most widely discussed initiatives, largely promotional in nature, was the purchase of Comedian, Maurizio Cattelan’s artwork consisting of a banana taped to a wall. Sun acquired the work for $6.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction in New York in November 2024 and later completed the performance by eating the banana in front of the cameras.

Why the market has rewarded TRX

TRX’s performance over the past year does not appear to be an isolated event, but rather the reflection of a feature that few crypto projects can claim: demand linked to real and growing use of the network, rather than exclusively to financial speculation. Every operation on Tron consumes two types of resources, known as “bandwidth” and “energy”, which can be understood as the fuel required to execute a transaction or interact with a smart contract. Users who do not want to pay a fee for every individual operation can lock TRX in advance and obtain the required resources through a mechanism similar to a subscription: instead of paying for each transaction, they commit a quantity of tokens to secure operating capacity on the network. As stablecoin traffic increases, so does structural demand for TRX from exchanges, payment processors, professional operators, and large wallets.

The relationship between network usage and the value of TRX is not automatic, however. High-volume operators can lock a substantial amount of tokens and obtain enough energy for an extended period without having to purchase additional TRX in proportion to transaction growth. For rising network activity to support the price of TRX more directly, the token’s economic role therefore needs to be strengthened, for example through larger burns, higher staking requirements, or services that make TRX indispensable to the use of the infrastructure.

Some signs of this development have already emerged. In the first quarter of 2026, Tron generated $82.2 million in protocol fees, second only to Hyperliquid. JustLend, the largest lending protocol in the Tron ecosystem, has also launched a buyback and burn programme funded by operating revenues.

The T3 Financial Crime Unit

One of the most significant developments of the past two years concerns the fight against illicit activity. In September 2024, Tron established the T3 Financial Crime Unit together with Tether and blockchain analytics company TRM Labs. The unit was designed to identify and rapidly freeze USDT linked to money laundering, fraud, and other criminal activities.

The model combines three distinct areas of expertise. TRM Labs analyses suspicious flows reported by authorities and reconstructs the movement of funds across wallets, exchanges, and jurisdictions; Tron provides visibility into transactions occurring on its network; and Tether, as the issuer of USDT, can directly freeze the addresses involved. In some cases, this combination of capabilities allows the process to be completed in less than 24 hours, from the authorities’ initial request to the effective freezing of the funds.

Since its launch, the T3 Financial Crime Unit has frozen more than $450 million in assets associated with illicit activity, working with law-enforcement agencies in 23 jurisdictions across five continents. Among its most significant interventions was the dismantling of a money-laundering network in Madrid, carried out together with Spain’s Guardia Civil, which resulted in the freezing of approximately $26.4 million, as well as its support for Operation Lusocoin by the Brazilian Federal Police. In November 2025, the Financial Action Task Force, the intergovernmental body responsible for setting international standards against money laundering and terrorist financing, cited the T3 Financial Crime Unit as an example of public-private cooperation in the fight against digital financial crime.

An increasingly integrated infrastructure

The closure of the SEC proceedings removed a source of uncertainty that had discouraged the involvement of regulated operators in the Tron ecosystem for years. Since then, the network has accelerated its convergence with traditional finance.

In payments, Tron joined the Mastercard Crypto Partner Program in March 2026, an initiative through which the payment network collaborates with more than 85 blockchain networks and crypto companies to develop products capable of connecting digital assets with its payment and settlement infrastructure. For a network that already processes more than $22 billion in transactions per day, joining the programme represents above all a step towards concrete applications such as cross-border remittances and B2B transfers, rather than the introduction of a function already available to consumers.

Participation in the programme therefore strengthens Tron’s positioning as a potential infrastructure for payments and settlement, in addition to its role as a high-speed blockchain. However, this remains an early-stage development: its ability to translate the partnership into products that can be used at scale has yet to be demonstrated.

Conclusions

Tron now represents a distinctive case within the crypto landscape: an infrastructure that processes daily volumes comparable to those of traditional payment systems, while remaining relatively little known outside the industry. Its relevance is not based solely on speculation or the promise of future applications, but on an already established function: enabling the fast, inexpensive, and predictable transfer of tokenised dollars. This operational centrality has also been reflected in the market: TRX now ranks among the ten largest crypto-assets by market capitalisation and is one of the few major digital assets to have gained ground during a period marked by sharp losses for Bitcoin and Ethereum.