TRON

Eric Manoukian (00:00)
Hey everyone, my name is Eric Manukian and I'm a research analyst here at Massari and I'm joined today by Sam Alfara. He's a ⁓ community spokesperson at the Tron Dow. Sam, pleasure to have you.

Sam Elfarra (00:11)
Thanks for having me, Eric. Happy to be here.

Eric Manoukian (00:13)
Awesome. Well, today we're going to be going over the ⁓ Q1 Tron 2026 report as well as just standard performance from the Tron ecosystem, highlight what stood out and take a look at what's ahead for the rest of 2026. Any insight before we get started, Sam?

Sam Elfarra (00:31)
No, just happy to dive into it. Really excited to dig deep into kind of the success we've had from your guys's lens. And maybe near the end, I'll explain some things that we're doing in AI as well.

Eric Manoukian (00:42)
Absolutely. Yeah, we'll definitely get to all those touch points throughout the time here today ⁓ Yeah, so let's start out with the big picture obviously ⁓ for q1 Just some kind of top-of-line stats in court according to TRX market cap is like was up ten point three percent to twenty nine point seven billion dollars With the price of the coin going from 28 cents to 31 cents by the end of the quarter any any insight any thoughts there

Sam Elfarra (00:46)
Perfect awesome.

Eric Manoukian (01:08)
on the outperformance, especially with the broader rest of the market kind of being in a little bit of a bear market in Q1.

Sam Elfarra (01:14)
For sure. We typically don't like to talk or look at, you know, price action. We try to strictly look at the utility of the token. you know, TRX is the native utility token of the Tron network. What really drives its usage is mainly or its utility is the gas fees or transactions that occur on our blockchain. So, you know, we're a delegated proof of stake consensus mechanism. Every transaction that occurs on the Tron network goes into burning TRX, which is the native utility token of the Tron network.

So we really try to focus less on price action and more on the fundamentals of what makes the Tron protocol self-sustaining, sustainable, and utilized.

Eric Manoukian (01:50)
Yeah, of course. And to that point, Tron is the leading network, or one of the leading networks with stable coins with their market cap growing 4.9 % Q over Q, briefly touching the $85 billion mark and I think exceeding as of of recording today, as well as average daily transactions hitting a quarterly record at 10.9 million transactions per day. So obviously standout numbers, a quarterly record in terms of usage on the network itself.

And as well as one other big picture item to talk about is the SEC dismissal of all claims against the Tron Foundation in March. from the team's point of view, like what really defined Q1? Was it the regulatory clarity, institutional momentum, or anything else?

Sam Elfarra (02:31)
Yeah, from my perspective, I think the institutional momentum is always something we'd like to focus in on because that's something that we can, for lack of a better term, control a little bit more of. It's really just about building those relationships. For example, we have Anchorage who has recently integrated us. We also have ZeroHash who has also integrated us. And these are kind of platforms where we're getting a lot more exposure to the United States for institutional adoption and of course globally as well.

So we really try to focus in on those types of integrations, those types of support. And I think that has been a very successful thing, one of many very successful things and milestones that we've completed in Q1.

Eric Manoukian (03:06)
Yeah, of course. let's dig into the next topic. stable coins. Tron is very known for stable coin dominance, especially with its USDT dominance. More specifically in terms of some statistics within the Q1 report talking about USDT on Tron growing to 4.5 % Q over Q to $84.5 billion, holding a 98.6 % market share of all stable coins on Tron.

while also processing $2 trillion in cumulative USDT transfers in Q1, second only to Ethereum's $2.2 trillion, but still an impressive number nonetheless. And finally, USDT grew 81.5 % Q over Q to $969.5 million. So obviously, Tron is clearly the dominant USDT rail. How does the team thinking about defending and extending that position in the future?

Sam Elfarra (03:58)
I think it's really about making sure that the Tron blockchain continues to stay as a decentralized permissionless and neutral blockchain protocol that insights, invites, excites people to build applications on our blockchain. You know, we have a great relationship with the Tether team who have taken, who have built obviously an amazing product on our blockchain, given the low fees, high throughput and the reliability that the Tron network provides. And that is a

you know, a formula for success effectively. And that's what's really driven the massive amount of stable coin adoption on the Tron network, the massive amount of usage of it. I believe we represent close to like 28 or 29 % of all stable coins circulating around Tron. It's somewhere around that range, I believe. And of course, we want to continue to move in that direction. We want to continue to create more payment focused applications, or at least invite them to be built on our blockchain.

And then also we're exploring the agentic realm where we believe agentic commerce can be a very exciting vertical where stable coins can be utilized within it.

Eric Manoukian (04:58)
Yeah, no, Tron's definitely set up for the ⁓ agentic ecosystem coming in the future. Obviously agents is a top of mind priority for a lot of networks and the proliferation of agents and the ease of use is obviously top of mind. So before we get into any of the agentic conversation, I'd like to kind of hone back in on the institutional adoption and regulatory milestones for the Tron network.

briefly talked about Anchorage Digital and Bitmark coming on as ⁓ new exchange listings, as well as Anchorage allowing for custody on their platform, as well as some other exchange listings like Bitstamp, Gemini, Deribit for options, a number of US-based exchanges that are coming on and

exposing themselves to the Tron network. One other thing, one other big news that I thought was very interesting was the polymarket adding Tron deposits. So that was very interesting to see, very cool to see them. ⁓ So you guys come out into the prediction market space.

Sam Elfarra (05:56)
we've always had great relationships with these institutions and we've always been in talks with them for a relatively long time. And recently with the integration of metamask, which is more of like a broader web three wallet, as well as Walt connect zero hash, utila, et cetera. you know, we've always had great relationships with

always looking to work with institutions, especially in the US. And we've made that success with Anchorage as a kind of a big starter. And then of course, ZeroHash and then other custody platforms who are creating more creative or larger phased out integrations like Utila. So we want more. The more the merrier for us, the more exposure, the better. And we're really excited to continue on this momentum that we had from Q1 into Q2.

Eric Manoukian (06:34)
Yeah, definitely a ton of integrations, a ton of momentum for the Tron network. Obviously more to come in the future. But yeah, I think we can move into the AI and the agentic economy. I think this is a very exciting aspect that Tron is developing on. Leaders in the stable coin space, just a leader in the L1 space in general. I think it's important to consider the AI push amongst all networks.

as well as agents continue to really thrive on blockchain networks. Obviously, one of the biggest things was that the Tron AI fund expanded by tenfold from $100 million to $1 billion. if you can provide some context into what kind of projects the fund is targeting and what does that pipeline look like, it'd be great to hear some context in regards to that.

Sam Elfarra (07:19)
Yeah, you know, right now the agentic world is very exploratory. So we're really looking for creative entrepreneurs or developers that are thinking about how can they utilize AI agents to conduct transactions in a more efficient and effective manner, or even creating agentic finance focused verticals where agents can navigate DeFi from either a security perspective, which is obviously very much needed given the recent market with the usage of DeFi currently. So

We need to be able to scale that. I think agentic finance can be a phenomenal place for that. So it's really looking at it from an agentic finance angle, agentic commerce, or even other forms of agentic verticals that I think can be very, very beneficial and important. So we're really just looking for creatives. We're looking for creative entrepreneurs, like I said, to build these applications and think about utilizing Tron, given the liquidity depth that we have, our low fees, our high throughput, and the massive amount of volume and usage that we have.

We have a lot of liquidity depth with our stable coins on Tron. We're tried and tested blockchain in terms of stable coins. So now it's really about introducing that into the agentic realm as well. So that's kind of how we're looking at it. so any project that wants to build on Tron who believes that they can really benefit from a grant, assuming that they can find product market fit and really create something self-sustaining. We invite them to apply for the AI fund.

Eric Manoukian (08:36)
Awesome. Yeah. So any, any, ⁓ entrepreneurs looking to join the AI space and really help build on Tron, obviously reach out to the team and they can help you out there. I think another big, aspect from the, from the team was that you guys took a board seat on the HN Tech AI Foundation governing board alongside teams like Circle and JP Morgan. Would love to hear some, ⁓ comments in regards to, to that strategic decision.

Sam Elfarra (09:02)
Yeah, so we joined the Agentic AI Foundation as a gold member. We're very happy to do so. As mentioned earlier, we're taking a big push on the Agentic Commerce, Agentic Payments, Agentic Finance realm. You know, the thinking is AI agents will be doing more transactions than humans. So if you believe in that thesis, AI agents need to have some sort of asset that they can utilize that's available 24-7-365. It has limited fees in terms of its usage.

You can utilize it for micro payments or for high throughput activities. And the best asset for that is a digital asset, specifically stable coins, especially if you're conducting a gent to commerce use cases. So that's really the thinking of why we decided to move into this angle, considering how successful we have been in the payments world on chain with USDT and other stable coins on Trom. And now we want to be able to introduce that with agents. now instead of humans doing it,

Agents can do it on behalf of their humans, any sort of commerce transaction or even specifically or even in other respects, DeFi.

Eric Manoukian (09:59)
Yeah, I think it's becoming common consensus that the future of blockchain technology is going to be dominated by agents more so than humans. mean, early days right now, but there's obviously a lot of room to grow within this industry. Awesome. Let's move into some more network activity in regards to DeFi, TBL, as well as just overall network usage.

Sam Elfarra (10:15)
Absolutely.

Eric Manoukian (10:26)
Um, to start some high level facts from the, uh, TBL was up 7.1 % Q over Q to $4.7 billion. Whereas Dex volume was down 25%, uh, Q over Q to $63 million on average per day. Um, on the other side of that daily active addresses was up 13.7 % Q over Q to 3.2 million, um, which is, which is a record and new addresses were on average were down 20%.

So growth was mainly driven by ⁓ returning users. And like you alluded to earlier, a number of integrations, including Metamask, Zerion, Wallet Connect, and others really broadened access to Tron. So the on-chain activity story is pretty interesting. What does that really tell us about Tron's user base as of today?

Sam Elfarra (11:14)
Well, that they always move towards something that's reliable and that's tried and tested. A lot of our user base, our user profile, you can think of them are in the global South. So think areas in Latin America, Africa, across Asia, as well as other parts of Southeast Asia too. So you can really think of those areas as the, the, the users are from. And that's really because of a lack of financial infrastructure in those markets. So they typically will navigate.

and utilize a system or in this case, a blockchain that allows them to move money across border more effectively and at lower costs, be able to hedge against hyperinflation that their local currency may be seeing. So there's a lot of those use cases as to why users are utilizing Toronto in those regions. That's where we're seeing our user profile makeup look like. And so it's our job to continue to work with regulators in those regions to ensure that they understand that

The Tron blockchain itself is infrastructure that we're working with service providers, whether it be custody platforms to make sure that they're creating adequate solutions and applications to those end users. And we also want to navigate and enter the developed markets more like the U.S. And we're utilized globally too. It's not to say that we're not utilizing those areas already. We just want to make sure that we're always kind of in the cutting edge of innovation and pushing ourselves into those markets where

users can really benefit from us. So that's where our users are coming from. That's why it's so high and it's utilized all the time. If you're trying to move money from one country to another, if you're trying to conduct trade between one country and another doing importing and exporting, you typically want to use an asset that can move across those borders very, very fast, very cheaply. And the Tron network has been that blockchain or that rail for that to occur.

Eric Manoukian (12:53)
Yeah, absolutely. And now let's move over to kind of financial performance and supply dynamics. Obviously, in regards to the TRX token, we discussed the price appreciation, but more so down to the fees and as well as circulating supply conversations. Obviously, total fees decline 7%.

Q over Q, $610 million, still adjusting from the August 2025 fee reduction proposal that was made. I guess, is there any insight that you want to, in regards to that, it was obviously the second consecutive lowering in fees in the quarter, but obviously still a substantial amount for the amount of usage that is on the platform itself.

Sam Elfarra (13:36)
Yeah, we're always focused on increasing our usage, our user base, our transaction cow, our settlement volume. I think that's a stronger metric to focus in on because it really tells the story of how utilized the blockchain is, especially Tron. And on top of that, too, we've had no downtime, which is overlooked a lot. And it's kind of taken for granted. ⁓ And I think with the Tron network, we haven't had any downtime. We've been tried and tested and we're making efforts to continue to make our blockchain even further, more competitive.

and make sure that we put ourselves in areas where we can continue to grow our transaction count.

Eric Manoukian (14:05)
Yeah, no, of course, obviously uptime is an utmost priority for a number of networks. If you don't have the reliable financial infrastructure to move assets and settle them, if you consistently are met with down times, it becomes an unreliable source. So obviously the uptime is a definite priority for teams like Tron.

Sam Elfarra (14:26)
Absolutely, absolutely.

Eric Manoukian (14:27)
Yeah, so moving into circulating supply, it did increase 0.07 % Q over Q. Again, very small, negligible, obviously, because of the lowering fee, the fee reduction, as well as the daily mints of TRX kind of coinciding together. Obviously, there's not that much of an issue in regards to Tron. I don't see it as such, but obviously, if you have any comments in regards to that.

Sam Elfarra (14:55)
No, I mean, it's a good point to bring up. know, again, we want to continue to keep our blockchain competitive, make sure that the blockchain itself is utilized a lot. And we're moving in the right direction, I think. So it's not too much to comment on there specifically, but be on the lookout in this quarter, specifically Q2 of 2026 for some more collaborations that we're looking to conduct.

Eric Manoukian (15:14)
Yeah, no, of course. And finally, or not finally, but moving into the next category that kind of will lead us more towards the forward-looking outlook is protocol upgrades and developer roadmap. So obviously you guys released Great Voyage V4.8.1 shipped in February to have more alignment with EIP6780. Any comments in regards to that? I know there's Great Voyage V4.8.2 that would be

bringing compatibility with BLS 12-381 pre-compile, so enabling CK proof support. Obviously, huge upgrades in regards to future potential use cases for the Tron network, so would love to hear some insight into 4.8.2.

Sam Elfarra (15:58)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So this next major upgrade is really targeting, as you mentioned, five TIPs. TIP 2537, TIP 2935, TIP 7823, TIP 7883, and also TIP 7939. They're all focused really on ensuring the cryptography of the blockchain continues to compile appropriately. We have historical block hash retrieval methods in place.

We have the proper block hashes beyond the current 256 block window, tighter gas pricing bound, and then also op codes ensuring to be more compatible with EVM and other types of aspects. Our DevOps team and also our broader core product team can probably give a little bit more insight into those specifically. But from my perspective, we're always pushing out on a bi-weekly basis, new content regarding the actual product itself, how to build on Tron and the new updates.

So if your audience wants to stay up to date with what that make sure that they can follow us on on on X at Trondau. And again, we want to continue to keep our blockchain competitive. So from a operational standpoint, that's extremely important. Then of course, from a utility standpoint, that's also very important as well. So we're always looking to do more collaborations, more developer integrations, and then things of that matter. We'd like to not call them partnerships because we like to stay as a Dow.

know, decentralized autonomous organization that is the Toronto that's dedicated to promoting those innovative technologies, those web three technologies, especially us being very decentralized. So we try to really focus in on those strategic collaborations, those integrations, and then improving our product as much as we can from the developer community.

Eric Manoukian (17:32)
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's imperative to take note of the strategic collaborations with other teams, but as well as enforcing or even helping ⁓ developers to build on Tron and providing them an easy to use ecosystem in order to develop and improve the Tron ecosystem in general.

Sam Elfarra (17:50)
Mm-hmm, definitely.

Eric Manoukian (17:51)
Awesome. But definitely want to move into kind of the forward looking outlook for the Tron ecosystem. I think I've kind of butchered you with a number of questions, but I definitely want to open this floor up to you to really talk through what to watch for in Q2 and beyond when it comes to the Tron network, whether it's AI, more institutional adoption, stable coin growth. Yeah, the floor is yours.

Sam Elfarra (18:14)
Yeah, we really want to start working with more projects building in our ecosystem and figuring out use cases from the AI front, whether that be Gentile commerce focused or Gentile finance focused. So that's one that we're really looking forward to in Q2. We also have a plethora of new integrations that are occurring in Q2 on an organic basis. We're looking to get more adoption in the US as well as more developed markets.

while still continuing to maintain our market share and grow it in the emerging markets. On top of that as well, we want to introduce new assets to our ecosystem in a compliant manner. We want to continue to work with more regulators globally so that they understand what the blockchain, what blockchain really is, especially us being an infrastructure. And then we also want to dive deeper into the payments realm. We've been very successful there. We want to be, create something a little bit more sophisticated so that we can offer that to

⁓ our broader user base and work with platforms that are creating that type of things. So we have a lot of things that are going to be announced later this quarter, Q2 of 2026, that I can't share right now because we're keeping it kind of on the down low. But once they are available and ready to go, I'm sure your audience will be aware of it. And it's been in the works for quite some time. But that's where that's where we want to go in Q2, AI, more institutional adoption.

And then of course, more payments focused use cases.

Eric Manoukian (19:33)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think Tron has the footing, the grounding ⁓ to really execute on those roadmap items. A number of huge topics to come into play for the growth of Tron. But yeah, obviously as we come to ⁓ a wrap in the conversation, wanna kind of give you one last comment before we close things out.

Sam Elfarra (19:54)
Yeah, if you want to build on a blockchain that's been tried and tested, that is consistently moving trillions of dollars in value and empowering directly and indirectly billions of people across the globe, look no further than the Tron network. If you're creating, whether it is an agentic solution, a payment solution, or even a DeFi solution, the Tron network is definitely your place to go. Don't hesitate to ever reach out to us on X to learn a little bit more about how you can get involved. But then most importantly, it's our job to continue to ensure that our blockchain stays competitive.

stays decentralized, utilized, and we're going to keep making our efforts to grow our usage. And yeah, this is the blockchain for moving trillions and empowering billions.

Eric Manoukian (20:31)
Awesome. And if you haven't read the State of Q1, State of Tron Q1, 2026 report, obviously take a look at Ms. Ari. I authored it myself. It's comprehensive report on much more details than we kind of got into today, but definitely take a look. Obviously a lot of great things coming in the future for the Tron network and excited to continue working with you. Thanks for joining me, Sam.

Sam Elfarra (20:55)
Yeah, thank you, Eric, and thank you for having

Eric Manoukian (20:57)
Awesome. Have a good one.

Sam Elfarra (20:58)
Thank you, bye bye.