TRON (TRX) settled $2.1 trillion in Tether (USDT) transfers during the second quarter, yet its DeFi value locked slipped 1.9% and exchange trading kept shrinking.
Key Points:
- USDT supply on TRON closed the second quarter at $87.9 billion, ahead of Ethereum.
- Average daily decentralized exchange volume fell 21.7% to $49.3 million, a fourth straight quarterly drop.
- Network fees rose 15.9% to $699.4 million, the first increase since August 2025.
TRON Stablecoin Settlement Sets Quarterly Records
Research firm Messari published its quarterly review on Aug. 10, handing the network the largest circulating balance of USDT of any blockchain.
Supply on the chain closed June at $87.9 billion, ahead of Ethereum (ETH) at $78.7 billion. Stablecoins on TRON reached a record $89.2 billion in total, up 4.1% over the three months, with Tether holding a 98.5% share of that market.
Average daily transfer volume rose 4.3% to $22.8 billion for the quarter, reversing the decline the network recorded three months earlier. Daily transactions averaged 11.8 million and active addresses 3.6 million, and the chain cleared a single-day record of 14.6 million transactions on Jun. 15.
Also Read: OpenAI Buys Back $7B In Employee Shares, And The IPO Still Has No Date
Messari Analysts Explain TRON DeFi Retreat
Inside the chain, the economy moved the other way. Total value locked across TRON DeFi fell 1.9% to $4.4 billion over the same period, and JustLend, the largest protocol on the chain, dropped 10.5% to $2.9 billion. That cut the lender's share of network value locked to 66.5%.
Average daily volume on TRON's decentralized exchanges fell 21.7% to $49.3 million, a fourth straight quarterly decline that analysts tied to the broader "cooldown in onchain spot trading" rather than anything specific to the chain. The slide now stretches back to the second half of 2025, a full year in which payment flows and trading activity have pulled apart.
Fees ran the opposite way in dollar terms, climbing 15.9% to $699.4 million, the first quarterly increase since an August 2025 governance change cut the energy unit price. Circulating supply still grew by about 87 million tokens as issuance outpaced burns. Total staked TRX slipped 0.9% to 45.7 billion, pushing the staking rate down to 48.2% by the close of June.
TRX Price Lags Network Growth
U.S. access to the token widened through the same months.
Binance.US restored spot trading in April, Bitnomial added TRX to its regulated venue, Canary Capital amended its filing for a staked TRX fund, and Anchorage Digital opened institutional staking in July.
None of that has done much for the price. TRX gained 11.6% in the first quarter, then finished June near $0.32 and now changes hands on spot markets at roughly $0.336. The token sits roughly 23% under its record high, and its range has stayed narrow through a year in which settlement volume kept climbing to fresh peaks.
Read Next: Foldable iPhone Isn't Out Yet, But Apple Has Already Planned Two More Models Through 2028
