In Q4 2025, TRON strengthened its position as the leading infrastructure layer for retail stablecoin payments while expanding into intent-based execution and institutional distribution:
Between October and December 2025, TRON solidified its position as a dominant global network for retail payments and stablecoin settlement.
October 2025
November 2025
December 2025
TRON averaged 2.8M daily active users between October and December 2025, up from 2.6M in Q3 2025. For reference, the average daily active users across the benchmarked chains are 1.02M, with only Solana (2.9M) exhibiting higher active users than Tron in Q4 2025.
About 78% of TRON’s daily active users transact wallet-to-wallet as of 31st December 2025, up from 74% in Q3 2025. Tron continues to be a leader amongst benchmarked chains for this metric - reinforcing its role as a retail-focused payments network.
TRON’s share of global retail-sized (<$1,000) USDT transfers stayed consistent at ~56% between October and December 2025. This is lower than what it was in Q3 2025 (65%) but is still the highest among all benchmarked networks, making TRON the leading network for retail USDT activity.
TRON’s share of the total stablecoin market capitalization increased from 25.7% in early October to 26.7% by the end of December 2025. The gain came largely due to the decline in flows on stable centric chains such as Plasma, as its TVL went from $3.07B in September 2025 to $2.95B in December 2025. This signifies the moat that TRON has within the stablecoin sector and its continued dominance within this domain.
Average daily fees on TRON decreased from $1.2M in early October to $975k by the end of December 2025. This drop is in line with a decline in daily fees for other benchmarked chains. TRON currently has the second highest average daily fees, behind Hyperliquid ($1.6M in December 2025), with the gap closing considerably in Q4 2025.
Intents shift the focus from "how" a transaction works to "what" the user wants to achieve. Instead of manually handling gas fees and complex routing, users simply state their goal - such as a token swap - and automated solvers handle the technical steps. The impact of this shift is evident in the Q4 2025 data, where TRON’s intent volume surged to $449M, a massive 899% increase Quarter-on-Quarter.
This performance ranks TRON as the third-largest ecosystem for intent-based activity, following Ethereum ($3.5B) and Solana ($634M). This growth trajectory underscores how abstracting technical friction is successfully driving liquidity and mainstream adoption across the network.
TRON’s total value locked (TVL) dropped from $6B to just over $4.5B in Q4 2025. At a sector level, lending continues to dominate with 82% of the total TRON TVL, up from 79% in Q3 2025. DEXs saw a decline in TVL share from 16.7% in Q3 2025 to 11% in Q4 2025.
JustLend remains the dominant lending protocol in the TRON ecosystem, accounting for a significant portion of the network's Total Value Locked (TVL) at $3.9B. Q4 2025 saw JustLend’s active loans go up from $168M to $206M. During this same period, the price of JST, the protocol's native token, followed a similar trend.
On October 24, 2025, JustLend DAO launched a long-term deflationary initiative by allocating its net protocol revenue and USDD multi-ecosystem earnings (exceeding a $10M threshold) toward the recurring buyback and permanent burning of JST tokens. The protocol has undertaken JST buybacks worth $17M as of early Q1 2026.
TRON's share of global spot DEX volumes has consistently hovered just under 1%, with some spikes above this level. Overall DEX activity on the network has remained constant.
SunSwap, the primary spot DEX on TRON saw its daily volumes go down by 34%, from $81m at the start of October 2025 to $53m by the end of December 2025. SunPerp, the primary perp DEX on TRON, on the other hand saw its volumes go up 34% in Q4 2025, from $72M to $96M. During the same time, the global decentralized exchange perpetual volumes actually dropped from $1.3T in October 2025 to $1T in December 2025 - highlighting SunPerp’s divergence and growth v/s the overall decentralized perpetuals market.
November 2025 also saw SunPerp rebrand to SunX, with the core idea to transform the platform into a full ecosystem with a zero gas strategy, dark pool mode and institutional tools (for high frequency quant traders). December 2025 saw SunX exhibit two consecutive days with volumes over $1B.
SunSwap has continued its aggressive SUN token buyback and burn program. This program is funded by all revenue generated from SunPump, which is directed towards the repurchase and destruction of SUN tokens to promote a healthy and sustainable ecosystem. The most recent phases of the program include: 2.05M SUN tokens burned between October 9 and November 3 (Phase 48), and 2.1M SUN tokens burned between November 3 and December 27 2025 (Phase 49).
In total, approximately 4.2M SUN tokens were bought back and burned in Q4 2025, which represents 0.02% of the total supply.
Despite being down -16.8% in Q4 2025, TRX outperformed all other major corporate treasury assets (including BTC, which was down 26%), except BNB (down 15.9%). This highlights TRX’s downside protection in an unfavorable market environment.
TRX’s trading volumes on centralized exchanges recorded a drop v/s Q3 2025 volumes as total volumes (spot + derivatives) reached $57B. This mirrors a broader market trend of lower trading engagement, as covered in Coindesk’s December 2025 Exchange Review.
In spot markets, TRX is widely available, trading on 70 centralized exchanges. Spot volumes totalled just over $43B in Q4 2025. A select group of exchanges; Binance, MEXC, and HTX, accounted for 42% of activity, underlining their importance to TRX’s liquidity profile.
TRX perpetual futures volumes also dropped in Q4 2025, totalling $14.2B. Binance, Bybit, Gate, Bitget, and HTX were the leading venues for these trades overall, with OKX being the key gainer in terms of volume share in Q4 2025, with $2.2B in Q4 2025 volumes (15% market share).
Mid-price depth, defined as the total order book volume within ±1% of the mid-price, indicates a market’s ability to absorb larger trades without significant slippage.
Daily mid-price depth (1%) for TRX-USD and TRX-USDT pairs dropped from 7.3M TRX to 3.6M TRX in Q4 2025. Most of this drop can be attributed to a drop in liquidity on Bitget (3.2M TRX to 554K TRX in Q4 2025). The rest of the venues displayed relatively consistent depth throughout the quarter, despite the drop in quarter-over-quarter volumes for TRX and broader crypto market.
Q4 2025 demonstrated TRON’s resilience and continued growth as a primary infrastructure layer for the global stablecoin economy. Despite broader market volatility, the network increased its daily active user base and captured a higher share of the total stablecoin market capitalization.
Strategic integrations with institutional platforms like Revolut and high-utility prediction markets like Kalshi indicate TRON's successful move beyond its core ecosystem into mainstream financial applications. The deployment of v4.8.1 has further prepared the network for technical parity with Ethereum-based DeFi, while the rebranding of SunX and continued SUN/JST buyback programs reinforce a sustainable long-term economic model.
As TRON moves into 2026, it remains well-positioned to maintain its status as the leader in retail-focused payments, with opportunities to further diversify its TVL and leverage new AI-driven DeFi capabilities.
