Abstract:

Tron Ecosystem conceived its mainnet in 2018 and has evolved into a global network with more than 52 million users. It is by far the most popular public blockchain. A third of stablecoins in circulation are housed in its ecosystem. It processes $6 billion USD in daily transfer volumes. It aims to capitalize on its dominance in cross-border transfer and transform its layer-1 into the Global Settlement Layer with cross-chain operability for the next-generation payment system. Its integrated ecosystem encompasses Layer-1 protocols and smart contracts for a diverse range of use cases, including APENFT and BTFS storage systems. Tron has surpassed Ethereum in USDT circulation since April 2021, with $33 billion currently, accounting for about 50% of the total global supply.

Infrastructure

The TRON ecosystem adopted the Proof of Stake (PoS) mechanism quite early, a greener, more efficient, and scalable consensus protocol when compared to Proof of Work (PoW), criticized for using a lot of energy and providing higher transaction latencies. PoS has additionally provided attractive staking returns for token holders. The supply mechanism of the TRX token, apart from the 100 billion genesis supply, depends on the Rewards-Burn dynamics on a daily basis. New tokens are minted as incentives for various tasks performed on-chain, such as block validation and community voting. This is approximately 1.8% of the total circulation. Token burn, on the other hand, depends on the gross fees generated while on-chain transactions occur. Hence, both a negative and a positive scenario is possible. Projections based on year-to-date network performance predict that the total supply of TRX will increase by 0.65%, or 660 million tokens, in 2021, effectively flattening the supply curve.

TRON is known for inclusiveness in terms of user-friendliness, with an average transaction fee of 0.82 TRX, the lowest in the industry, while Ethereum, on the other hand, has an average transaction fee fetching nearly $70. TRON’s ultra-low rate in transaction fees, strong user momentum, and on-chain activities, together form a good recipe for a deflationary path.

Inclusivity

TRON has faster throughput and lower gas fees when compared to Bitcoin or Ethereum. Its mass appeal to a rapidly expanding global user base is not only manifested by its cost-effectiveness to dApp vendors but also as an inclusive payment solution to the underbanked populations across the world.

• Speed, Energy, and Costs: Average block generation on TRON takes about 3 seconds, compared to 10.5 minutes and 13.2 seconds for BTC and ETH. This is achieved through the DPoS consensus protocol. The protocol is amongst the greenest protocols and also provides users with the lowest transaction fee of $0.06 on average, in contrast to the astronomical fee charged on other networks.
• Industry Leading User Ecosystem: TRON hosts one of the largest and most active on-chain user bases, with global accounts exceeding 52 million, average daily active addresses (DAA) of 1.4 million, and peak DAA of 5.3 million, vis a vis the average DAA of Bitcoin and Ethereum at 1.0 million and 0.5 million respectively.
• Cross-Border Transfer: Average daily transfer value of ETH and TRON are running neck-to-neck at $6.7 billion and $6.1 billion respectively, both with the same peak value of $25 billion. In terms of transaction count, TRON is greater than both BTC and ETH by a wide margin, with 3.9 million average daily transactions.

Housing a Third of Stable Coins

TRC20 is the TRON protocol (ERC20 equivalent) to facilitate on-chain transactions in stablecoins, including USDC, USDT, and TUSD. At present, USDT ranks no. 1 with a total supply of $64.2 billion, while USDC comes second with $27.2 billion, and TUSD is at no. 6 with $1.94 billion. It is impressive that TRC20 USDT has overtaken ERC20 USDT since April 2021, in a short order of fewer than two years since its launch in 2019. Currently, TRON is home to the largest USDT circulation with c. $33 billion, representing around 50% of the global market share.

Revolutionizing Global Payments

Cross-border payments typically require the use of centralized platforms with high entry barriers. It usually consists of a long list of intermediaries like financial institutions and infrastructure service providers like SWIFT. By virtue of inter-bank communication through payment messaging protocols, SWIFT has been the big player when it comes to such transactions. SWIFT has proven inefficient, insecure, and inadequate to address the needs of the digitized world. TRON Layer-1 protocol is structured as a superior alternative, using real-time settlement (Global P2P payment) and near-zero fees. It not only lowers entry barriers for businesses and users alike but also provides thoroughly improved security.

Smart Contracts and DeFi Ecosystem

TRON is one of the fastest-growing open blockchains in the world. It has successfully integrated an ecosystem with multi-layer protocols of smart contracts that deliver to the spectrum of Defi, NFT, and Gamefi use cases. Leveraging its 52 million strong global user base, TRON’s Defi TVL stands above $10 billion with a peak read of $14 billion this year, among the Top-3.

BTFS

Recently, TRON acquired the world’s most widely used P2P file-sharing protocol, founded in 2001 BitTorrent. It has a wide range of users and a community based around it that participates in collaborative good-willed hosting and sharing in nearly 140 countries, with 2 billion user downloads and more than 100 million monthly active users. Since its acquisition in 2018, TRON has further enhanced BitTorrent with TRON integration to revitalize its original P2P protocols with the latest blockchain technology. As an offshoot of IPFS, BTFS is the next-generation storage sharing protocol based on TRON and BitTorrent protocols, providing a secure and scalable fragmentized content storage and delivery system.

BTTC

The entire value chain anticipates the BitTorrent Chain (BTTC), an upcoming layer-2 protocol; it will mark a significant milestone for the TRON ecosystem. BTTC aims to provide a seamless scaling solution to connect with Ethereum Virtual Machine. It would enable the cross-chain capability for dApp developers across Ethereum, BSC, and TRON.

APENFT

NFTs have been an emerging trend and a new use case of blockchain since 2021, particularly in the traditional art industry. TRON, being a popular ecosystem, made an early move in the NFT space via active collaboration with global brands including Christie’s. Recently launched APENFT, one of the first high-end crypto art investment communities. Its vision is to serve as well-greased crypto gears that support and propel the converging world of everyday life and the Metaverse in the not-too-distant future.

If you hold the TRX token, you can enhance your portfolio by staking to earn rewards. Leverage Luganodes' institutional-grade infrastructure to stake your holdings and create a passive income. Staking with us ensures ease of use, support, and safety while you earn, and also contribute to the security of the TRON chain.

Learn how to stake TRX tokens using this guide. You can learn more about staking on our website, and feel free to contact us for any queries!

About Luganodes

Luganodes is a world-class, Swiss-operated, non-custodial blockchain infrastructure provider that has rapidly gained recognition in the industry for offering institutional-grade services. It was born out of the Lugano Plan B Program, an initiative driven by Tether and the City of Lugano. Luganodes maintains an exceptional 99.9% uptime with round-the-clock monitoring by SRE experts. With support for 40+ PoS networks, it ranks among the top validators on Polygon, Polkadot, Sui, and Tron. Luganodes prioritizes security and compliance, holding the distinction of being one of the first staking providers to adhere to all SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and ISO 27001 standards as well as offering Chainproof insurance to institutional clients.