In 2017, the blockchain industry experienced a new public chain “battle of a hundred groups,” but a popular saying at that time was: “Everything besides Bitcoin is a knockoff.” Unexpectedly, eight years later, TRON (TRX) not only grew alongside industry trends but also consistently ranked among the top ten global crypto assets by market capitalization, occupying a leading position in the fields of payment and stablecoins. On the occasion of its eighth anniversary, TRON unveiled its first logo redesign since its establishment, fully upgrading its brand image to declare its new phase towards “global payment and financial infrastructure” with a more robust, readable, and trustworthy visual language. Let us take this opportunity to review the eight-year development journey of TRON and witness the rise of Chinese public chain power...

01

The first eight years of TRON: A Microcosm of Industry Development

It's said that a day in the crypto field is like a year in the human world. In the eight years from 2017 to 2025, the crypto field has undergone tremendous changes, especially for public chain infrastructures like TRON, which not only have continuously developed and grown but have also broken through one technical bottleneck after another, from 0 to 1, from 1 to 100. It can be said that the first eight years of TRON's journey are a microcosm of the industry's development.

2020-2025 TRON Account Growth Chart Source: TRONSCAN

Born, New Public Chain

If someone asks what projects joined the 'New Public Chain Hundred Group Battle' back then, only a few can be remembered, as most new public chains have disappeared from people's vision, with only a small number continuing to develop. Now TRON is the most successful among those new public chains.

In July 2017, the TRON Foundation was officially established, marking the beginning of TRON. This timing fell right in the middle of Ethereum's booming phase, with EOS emerging as a dark horse, putting considerable pressure on TRON.

By the end of May 2018, TRON launched its mainnet Odyssey 2.0 ahead of EOS and other new public chains, which was a technical milestone for TRON. Although this was a difficult start, it seemingly did not hinder its pace.

At the founding of TRON, Justin Sun aimed to make it the most important blockchain infrastructure, open to all global users in a decentralized ecosystem.

Ecological Explosion

In 2018, due to congestion, high fees, and low speeds on the Bitcoin and Ethereum chains, many blockchain concepts could not be realized. At that time, discussions in the crypto field about accelerating and expanding blockchain were exceptionally intense. After TRON's mainnet launch, the star high-performance public chain, EOS, also launched amidst 'eager anticipation.' Although EOS significantly improved performance, the user experience was disappointing due to complex processes, making even wallet setup difficult for many.

Against the backdrop of high fees and low speeds on Ethereum and high user thresholds on EOS, TRON has effectively captured the key points, not only bringing high performance and low fees of DPoS but also providing a user experience as simple as Ethereum. This design solution route remains relatively advanced even today.

The Vision of Stablecoin Strategy

In March 2019, Tether partnered with TRON to issue the TRC-20 based USDT stablecoin, which marked the beginning of TRON's stablecoin strategy. The close relationship between Tether, the leading stablecoin, and TRON may stem from a long-term cooperation foundation established during their early collaboration.

At that time, very few people knew about the DeFi concept. TRON once again leveraged its technical solution advantages in its infrastructure to achieve ultra-early stablecoin applications, perhaps not many realized that stablecoins would become the 'bearers' of crypto assets and blockchain technology applications in a few years. Subsequently, TRON even launched fee subsidy activities with major platforms.

Since then, the high transaction fees and slow settlement of stablecoin payments on blockchain networks have been completely transformed.

This initial 'move' laid the foundation for TRON's ecosystem today. Under Justin Sun's persistent promotion, TRON's stablecoin strategy has introduced technological and compliance innovations such as gas-free transactions, enhanced compliance, and established financial crime prevention mechanisms, collaborating with Tether, TRM Labs, and others to strengthen on-chain asset security. The issuance and settlement volume of TRC20-USDT have long been among the top in the world. As of September 2025, the issuance of TRC20-USDT surpassed 78.6 billion units, with nearly 68.49 million holding accounts, setting a historical high, and the cumulative transfer count exceeded 2.794 billion, accounting for nearly 50% globally. Looking back, one cannot help but admire the foresight of its stablecoin strategy.

DeFi Summer

In April 2020, TRON's first decentralized stablecoin lending platform, JUST, officially launched. This event marked the formal expansion of TRON's ecosystem during the then DeFi summer, enhancing the application of TRON's ecosystem and forming a sustainable development situation.

During that time, Justin Sun actively led TRON to comprehensively lay out DeFi, NFT, GameFi, and the Metaverse, resulting in thousands of DApps and a wealth of service scenarios. During the DeFi crisis with Curve, he and his team acted as 'firefighters', actively participating in market stabilization, reinforcing their actual contribution to industry stability and development.

Between 2019 and 2022, TRON attracted remittance and international payment users through low fees and high processing speeds (over 2000 TPS), becoming one of the most important DeFi infrastructures.

Fully 'Blossoming'

With the technical solutions and foundational applications like BTT and stablecoins established earlier, along with the support of ecosystems like DeFi, TRON's ecosystem has fully 'blossomed.' As of the time of writing, data from the Tronscan browser shows that the total number of TRON network accounts has exceeded 330 million, with a total TVL of nearly $30 billion, transaction volumes at the hundred billion level, and total transfer amounts at the trillion level, with a transaction count reaching 90 million and an amount of $25 billion in the past 24 hours.

TRON On-chain Data Source: Tronscan

In recent years, TRON has focused on continued expansion to improve throughput (>2000 TPS), lower fees, promote the Web3 ecosystem, integrate AI and decentralized storage, and further enhance TRON's competitiveness.

Currently, the TRON ecosystem can be said to be fully blossoming, with DeFi (including stablecoin payments), NFTs, decentralized storage, GameFi, Meme, AI+Web3, cross-chain interoperability, and other tracks ranking among the top of major public chains.

Earlier this year, CryptoRank released (TRON H2 2024: Leading the Stablecoin Ecosystem While Expanding New Horizons), highly praising TRON's performance in the second half of 2024, stating that TRON is the most cost-effective L1 blockchain, with nearly 400 million active addresses, becoming one of the three most active blockchains in the second half of 2024.

Top 10 Public Chain Stablecoin Interaction Addresses in the Second Half of 2024

In the first half of 2025: TRON's on-chain activities showed strong growth, with Q2 transaction volumes exceeding 784 million; USDT supply increased by 41% to 81.2 billion; integrated platforms such as AEON Pay, Chainlink, MoonPay; added super representatives like Kraken; TRX market value grew by 33.8%.

Justin Sun once proposed to TRON that 'the essence of blockchain lies in decentralization; it should break financial barriers and let the technological dividend benefit the world.' This vision has run through TRON's development journey. Today's achievements of TRON are attributable to the guidance of the foundation and the cohesion of the community, as well as Justin Sun's years of effort—he personally participated in industry conferences, actively promoted Web3, and pushed TRON's applications in emerging markets like Asia and Africa.

02

Towards 'Global Payment and Financial Infrastructure'

As of September 2025, the total market value of global stablecoins has exceeded $280 billion, with a trading volume reaching $33 trillion, nearly three times the trading volume of Visa.

In today's environment where the popularity of stablecoins continues to rise, TRON has long become a leader in the payment and stablecoin field. Driven by real applications, TRC-20 transfer volume and activity are globally leading, becoming an important network for cross-border payments and stablecoin circulation. Today, it has delivered a satisfactory 'report.'

The following chart comes from Visa Onchain Analytics, showing that from 2019 to 2025, the supply of stablecoins in TRON rapidly increased and once occupied a leading share, with the total supply of stablecoins segmented by blockchain consistently far ahead of popular public chains like Solana and Avalanche.

2019-2025 Stablecoin Supply (by Blockchain) Source: Visa Onchain Analytics

Goldman Sachs stated that 2025 is the 'Summer of Stablecoins', and BlackRock, in several of its market comments, views stablecoins as a 'core force of future finance (mega force)', emphasizing their rise as digital payment infrastructure. Reports and analyses from Standard Chartered and McKinsey predict that under the push of the (Genius Act) and regulatory clarity, the supply of stablecoins may reach $2 trillion by 2028.

As we all know, the future potential of stablecoins is extremely high, and countless large institutions have begun to prepare. TRON has already achieved 'de facto standardization' in the stablecoin field, as a player that entered ultra-early layouts in 2019, it is continuously reinforcing its 'moat' and is expected to increase its layout in cross-border payments/institutional cooperation in the future.

Recently, on the occasion of the eighth anniversary of TRON, a brand upgrade has arrived: not only a new image but also a strategic upgrade representing TRON's shift from 'leading public chain' to 'global payment and financial infrastructure.' It aims to become the underlying infrastructure for global blockchain payments, pushing blockchain towards mainstream and large-scale applications.

03

Summary

From a young public chain starting point to growing into a global leading decentralized network, TRON has officially welcomed an important moment of brand upgrade. Under the strategic vision, technological innovation, compliance exploration, and industry influence driven by Justin Sun, TRON has become one of the core networks with 'financial infrastructure' significance in the blockchain and crypto industry. Amidst the wave of new financial transformations, the well-rounded and solidly founded TRON is expected to grow into the 'Visa+SWIFT of Blockchain.'