The history of TRON DAO and the story of building a billion-dollar onchain payment network empire
Talking about the market share of onchain remittance networks, TRC20 is always the name that comes to mind first for Asian coin enthusiasts.
Although @trondao's position has been affirmed, surely many new brothers entering the market in 2025 still do not know about TRON 's story, let's find out with Rich in this article.
1/ The birth of TRON DAO
TRON is an ambitious blockchain idea, founded by Justin Sun (@justinsuntron).
Sun's original idea was to build a decentralized platform for digital content – where creators could make money directly without going through intermediaries like YouTube or Facebook.
TRON is especially inspired by Ethereum.
2014–2017 (beginning): Sun founded TRON in March 2014, but the project only really took off in 2017 when TRON held an ICO to sell TRX Token Sale and raised $70 million on Ethereum.
However, the ICO took place just before China issued an ICO ban, forcing Sun to move operations to Singapore.
2018 (Mainnet and Expansion): In May 2018, TRON launched its Mainnet, moving from the Ethereum network to a Proof of Stake blockchain.
In July 2018, TRON Foundation acquired BitTorrent for $140 million.
At the end of 2018, TRON reached 1 million accounts, opening a boom cycle in onchain USDT demand.
2021 (rebranded to TRON DAO): This was a major turning point when at the end of 2021, Justin Sun resigned as CEO of the TRON Foundation. The Foundation was restructured into TRON DAO - where the community holds the power to decide by voting with TRX.
Currently, TRON DAO focuses on DeFi, Non-Fungible Token, stablecoins, and dApps, with USDT being the largest stablecoin on the network (over $77 billion in circulation).
2/ Milestones and challenges of TRON DAO
TRON is growing rapidly thanks to low transaction fees, high speed (≈2000 TPS) and diverse ecosystem.
- 2019: TRON market Capital reached 1.6 billion USD
- 2023: TRON partners with Tether to launch USDD, an Algorithmic Stablecoin managed by TRON DAO Reserve.
However, the project also encountered many controversies:
- Legal Issues: In 2023, the SEC sued Justin Sun and TRON for selling unregistered securities via TRX/ BTT and alleging price manipulation.
However, in February 2025, the SEC withdrew the lawsuit.
- Criticism related to crime: In 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported that TRON handled more than 50% of global illegal crypto transactions in 2024 (about 26 billion USD).
TRON DAO denies that it controls decentralized transactions, and announced the T3 Financial Crime Unit (a partnership between Tether and TRM Labs from 2024) to fight onchain crime.
3/ Current situation
TRON DAO is at the peak of growth, asserting its position as one of the strongest blockchains in the world, focusing on DeFi – stablecoins – Tokenize of real assets.
According to data from TRONSCAN:
Users & Transactions: 342+ Million Accounts; 11+ Billion Transactions; 9 Million Transactions/Day on Medium , 2.83 Million Daily Active Accounts
TVL: Around $25 billion; Protocol revenue close to $1 billion per quarter in H1 2025
Stablecoin: Market leader with $77 billion USDT in circulation; Vai of global payments & international remittances
Recent Highlights:
- September 2025: TRON celebrates 8 years, upgrades brand
- Justin Sun is a keynote speaker at SmartCon 2025, TOKEN2049, Bitcoin Vegas 2025, Consensus HK 2025
- August 2025: Sun flies into space with Blue Origin to become Forbes' first crypto entrepreneur to become an astronaut
- TRON DAO sponsors many major conferences, promotes ecosystem cooperation (Chainlink, TON) and anti-crime initiative T3 FCU
#TRONGlobalFriends
@TronDao_VIE