TRON's USDT issuance on-chain surpasses Ethereum, further expanding its advantage in stablecoin settlement

According to official Tether data, as of August 13, 2026, USDT on the TRON network has been increased by an additional $1 billion, reaching $91.2 billion, surpassing Ethereum's USDT issuance of $90.3 billion to rank first among all blockchain networks. This historic milestone underscores TRON's further consolidation of its dominant position in the stablecoin space, and once again confirms the sustained appeal of low-fee, high-efficiency settlement networks for global stablecoin capital.

From Trading Asset to Settlement Tool: TRC20-USDT Use Cases Continue to Expand

The growth of USDT on the TRON network is primarily driven by sustainable, real-world demand. As of August 2026, TRC20-USDT issuance on the TRON network has officially surpassed $91.2 billion, setting a new historical record, with cumulative issuance increasing by approximately 10 billion tokens this year and the number of holding accounts reaching approximately 75.47 million. This scale has enabled TRON to consistently carry around half of global USDT issuance, accounting for roughly 50% of the total share.

From a usage structure perspective, TRON's real payment attributes are becoming increasingly evident. According to CoinDesk Research data, in Q1 2026, TRON's average daily active accounts rose to approximately 3.2 million, setting a new quarterly high. Meanwhile, TRON's share of retail-sized USDT transfers under $1,000 stands at approximately 50%, and it maintains a dominant position in the $1,000 to $100,000 range, further solidifying its position as a "user-friendly" public chain for retail and small-to-medium settlement. This indicates that one of the primary use cases for USDT on TRON remains the actual transfer of value between wallets.

Looking at longer-term cycles, on-chain transfer and settlement volumes confirm this assessment. According to a research report published by Messari, in Q1 2026, the TRON network processed approximately $2.04 trillion in USDT transfers, with cumulative network transactions reaching approximately 950 million. Average daily transactions rose from approximately 10.2 million in the previous quarter to approximately 10.9 million, also setting a quarterly record. Since the start of 2026, TRON has led all public chains with approximately $4.2 trillion in year-to-date USDT transfer volume.

What this depicts is not a ledger within a single trading platform, but rather a scenario where massive numbers of wallets directly transfer value on a public blockchain.

To illustrate: an overseas worker can send USDT to a family member's wallet, who then converts it into local currency; cross-border e-commerce merchants can settle payments to suppliers in USDT, reducing the impact of banking hours and intermediary bank processes; freelancers can receive payments from overseas clients and confirm on-chain arrival within minutes; digital asset service providers can move liquidity between exchanges, custodial wallets, and market-making accounts. While the amounts and purposes of these cases differ, the common requirements are fast settlement, transparent fees, and 24/7 operation.

Furthermore, cost stability is particularly important in a market environment with volatile network fees. Since August 2025, when TRON reduced the unit price of energy by approximately 60% through governance proposal No. 104, on-chain transfer costs have been further reduced.

Ecosystem Integration and Security Collaboration Advance in Parallel, Continuously Improving Stablecoin Infrastructure

The long-term development of a stablecoin network depends not only on issuance volume but also on entry point coverage, liquidity depth, developer support, and risk governance capabilities. TRON is building infrastructure across these dimensions simultaneously.

On the application entry point front, broad support for TRC20-USDT from wallets, trading platforms, payment service providers, and DeFi protocols enables users to conveniently deposit, withdraw, transfer, swap, and interact on-chain. With new stablecoins such as USDD integrating into the TRON ecosystem, the range of stablecoin asset types has been further enriched; protocols such as JustLend DAO extend stablecoin usage into collateralization and lending scenarios. Stablecoins are gradually evolving from a single-purpose transfer tool into foundational assets for on-chain financial activities.

In terms of user experience, mechanisms such as GasFree aim to address a common pain point: new users may hold USDT in their wallets but are unable to initiate transactions due to a lack of native tokens. By supporting payment of network fees in stablecoins, such solutions help simplify the first-time usage process. For merchants, wallets, and payment applications, reducing the cost of users understanding bandwidth, energy, and native gas tokens also facilitates the expansion of stablecoin services into broader consumer-facing scenarios.

More importantly, scale expansion must be accompanied by security governance capabilities. In September 2024, TRON, Tether, and TRM Labs jointly established the T3 Financial Crime Unit (T3 FCU), combining TRON's network visibility, TRM Labs' on-chain intelligence capabilities, and Tether's issuer-level freezing capabilities, while collaborating directly with law enforcement agencies across multiple jurisdictions. The typical workflow is: after law enforcement identifies wallets associated with illegal activities, TRM Labs traces fund flows, TRON provides network-level fund movement information, and Tether implements freezes at the issuer level.

As of May 2026, T3 FCU has announced that it has frozen over $450 million in illegal assets globally, covering 23 jurisdictions across five continents. TRM Labs disclosed that the mechanism can complete relevant actions within 24 hours of receiving law enforcement requests. These achievements demonstrate that combining the transparency of public blockchains with public-private collaboration models can improve the efficiency of identifying suspicious funds and responding to threats.

While continuing to lead in the stablecoin settlement space, TRON is accelerating its push into the new arena of artificial intelligence. Officially launched this April, B.AI is positioned as the "underlying financial infrastructure for the AI Agent era." This strategic move aligns with TRON's deep stablecoin liquidity and high-frequency, low-cost payment advantages, marking TRON's transition from the "world's largest stablecoin settlement network" toward the "underlying infrastructure for the AI agent economy," with a firm commitment to the long-term trend of AI and Web3 convergence.

From leading issuance scale, to continuously expanding payment and settlement advantages, to progressively improving security mechanisms, and now to active deployment in the AI sector, TRON's USDT competitiveness is transitioning from "quantitative accumulation" to "qualitative improvement."

TRON will continue to optimize network performance and user experience around stablecoin infrastructure, deepen collaboration with issuers, wallets, payment institutions, and security analytics firms, and provide global users with more efficient, secure, and inclusive digital value circulation services.