TRON (TRX): Justin Sun’s Chain That Became a Highway for USDT
Delegated proof of stake with 27 Super Representatives
TRON is a blockchain Justin Sun started in 2017. Cheap and fast, it has become a main road for the USDT dollar stablecoin; TRX pays its fees and is used for voting and staking.
1. Who built it, and when
TRON grew out of the TRON Foundation, set up in 2017 by Chinese-born entrepreneur Justin Sun. TRX began as an Ethereum (ERC-20) token; TRON opened its own mainnet in May 2018 and moved the tokens over in June. That year it also bought BitTorrent, the file-sharing company.
In late 2021 the foundation said it would dissolve and hand the network to TRON DAO, a community body, but Justin Sun remains its public face. In July 2025 Tron Inc., a listed company with a large TRX treasury, began trading on Nasdaq. On the Crypto Nation map, TRX is the city-hall tower of TRON City.
2. How it works: Super Representatives and energy
TRON uses delegated proof of stake (DPoS): people who stake TRX vote for 27 “Super Representatives”, who take turns producing a block about every three seconds. Smart contracts run on the TVM, which is close to Ethereum’s virtual machine, so Solidity code moves over with few changes.
Fees work differently. Transfers use “bandwidth” and smart contracts use “energy”; staked TRX earns both, users burn TRX when short, and a market for renting energy has grown up. With no maximum supply, total TRX rises or falls depending on whether block rewards outpace fee burns.
3. What it is used for: the stablecoin highway
TRON’s biggest job is moving dollar stablecoins. Tether began issuing USDT on TRON in 2019, and low fees made it a standard route between exchanges, for cross-border transfers and for dollar savings in emerging markets. A large share of all USDT circulates on TRON.
DeFi is led by the lender JustLend, the exchange SunSwap and USDD, a dollar stablecoin from the TRON camp. In 2024 TRON formed the T3 Financial Crime Unit with Tether and TRM Labs to trace and freeze criminal funds, and in January 2026 MetaMask added direct TRON support.
4. Things to know
With 27 block producers, TRON is seen as more centralised than larger networks, and Justin Sun’s influence is often noted. In March 2023 the US SEC sued him and related entities over unregistered securities sales and wash trading; the case ended in March 2026 with affiliate Rainberry paying $10 million, other claims dropped and nothing admitted or denied.
Because transfers are easy, analysts regularly report scams and illicit funds moving through USDT on TRON. T3 freezes respond to this, but also show that USDT is an asset its issuer can control. TRON is best seen as a cheap, fast payment rail built around a few block producers and one prominent founder.
Written from information public up to October 2026. It does not recommend or rate any coin and is not investment advice. If something is wrong, please tell us through the contact page.