TRON was founded in 2017 by Justin Sun, a Chinese entrepreneur and former Chief Representative of Ripple in China. After a successful ICO that raised over $70 million in September 2017, TRON launched its mainnet in May 2018. The platform uses a Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism, allowing for up to 2,000 transactions per second — significantly higher than Ethereum — with near-zero transaction fees.
TRON Blockchain: Key Facts
TRON's architecture supports smart contracts, DApps, NFTs, and DeFi protocols. The network is maintained by 27 elected Super Representatives who validate transactions and produce blocks every 3 seconds. TRON's most significant use case today is as the primary settlement layer for Tether (USDT): the network hosts approximately half of all circulating USDT supply, handling over 65% of global retail USDT transfers below $1,000. As of 2026, TRON's circulating supply of TRX stands at approximately 94.75 billion tokens.
January 2025
