The supply of TRX, the native token of TRON, grew on every one of the 108 days from 1 July to 16 October 2026, even as the network settled more than $2.2 trillion in stablecoins in the third quarter. Coindaro summed the daily figures published by the Tronscan explorer through its public API: over those 108 days the network issued 422.87 million TRX and burned 274.23 million, a net addition of 148.64 million TRX. Burns never matched issuance on a single day. CryptoSlate first reported the 108-day streak on 17 October; our own computation from the same source confirms it to the token.
The finding sits awkwardly next to the network’s headline numbers. TRON DAO’s own quarterly report puts third-quarter stablecoin settlement at $2.2126 trillion, up 5.1% on the second quarter. More dollars moved across TRON than in the previous quarter, yet a smaller share of new TRX was offset by burns.
The gap is not large in relative terms. Net issuance in the third quarter equalled about 0.13% of a circulating supply close to 94.9 billion TRX. What has changed is the direction: before an energy price cut voted in August 2025, the token was shrinking on net.
TRON TRX supply grew by 148.6 million tokens in 108 days, Tronscan data show
Tronscan publishes, for each day, the amount of TRX newly produced as block and voting rewards and the amount burned to pay network fees. We pulled the series on 18 October at about 05:00 UTC and added it up by period. The last day included is 16 October; the row for 17 October looked incomplete when queried, and CryptoSlate also left it out.
| Period | Days | TRX issued | TRX burned | Net change | Burn as share of issuance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Jul to 30 Sep 2026 (Q3) | 92 | 360,217,352 | 234,453,624 | +125,763,728 | 65.1% |
| 1 to 16 Oct 2026 | 16 | 62,650,984 | 39,778,374 | +22,872,610 | 63.5% |
| 1 Jul to 16 Oct 2026 | 108 | 422,868,336 | 274,231,998 | +148,636,338 | 64.9% |
Source: Coindaro calculation from the Tronscan API (daily fields for TRX produced and TRX burned), queried 18 October 2026. The third-quarter totals match those in TRON DAO’s quarterly report.
Issuance barely moves from one day to the next. It ran at about 3.9 million TRX a day throughout the period, because TRON pays a fixed reward per block to block producers and to the holders who vote for them. On 13 October, for example, the network issued 3,915,712 TRX and burned 2,728,737.
The burn side is the variable one. Daily burns ranged from about 1.56 million to 3.36 million TRX over the 108 days, so even the busiest day fell short of what was printed.
The 1 July starting point is CryptoSlate’s choice, not the start of the run. In the same Tronscan series, the last day on which burns topped issuance was 15 June 2026, when 3,972,874 TRX was burned against 3,915,712 issued. Counted from 16 June, supply has grown for 123 days in a row.
In October so far, issuance averaged 3.916 million TRX a day against burns of 2.486 million, a daily gap of about 1.43 million TRX. Those are CryptoSlate’s averages, and they agree with our sums. The arithmetic of a balance is simple: with issuance unchanged, burns would have to rise by about 57.5%; with burns unchanged, issuance would have to fall by about 36.5%.
TRON settled $2.21 trillion in stablecoins in the third quarter
TRON DAO’s “State of TRON Q3 2026” report, published in early October (the research index dates it 6 October, while Crypto Briefing gives 12 October as its publication date), describes a network still growing as a dollar rail. Stablecoin settlement reached $2.2126 trillion in the quarter, against $2.106 trillion in the second. Average daily settlement rose 3.9% to $24.05 billion; the quarter also had one more day than the previous one.
The stock of dollar tokens grew too. USDT and USDD on TRON added up to $93.88 billion at the end of September, up $4.88 billion or 5.5% over the quarter and 14.9% over a year, from $81.70 billion in the third quarter of 2025. The report also says cumulative transaction volume on TRON passed $30 trillion as of 23 September.
Independent data point the same way. On 18 October, DefiLlama counted $94.46 billion of stablecoins on TRON, second only to Ethereum at $143.9 billion and far ahead of Solana at $15.6 billion. That is about 31% of the roughly $302 billion of stablecoins DefiLlama tracks across chains. USDT makes up almost all of it: $92.88 billion, or 98.3% of TRON’s stablecoin supply and about half of all USDT in circulation. USDC barely registers on the chain, at about $28 million.
Crypto Briefing wrote on 13 October that stablecoin supply on TRON had climbed to around $95.3 billion by mid-October, without naming its data source. That is about $0.8 billion more than DefiLlama shows, and the two figures have not been reconciled.
| Metric | Q2 2026 | Q3 2026 | 1 to 16 Oct 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stablecoin settlement | $2.106 trillion | $2.2126 trillion (+5.1%) | Not yet published |
| Average daily settlement | $23.14 billion | $24.05 billion | Not yet published |
| USDT and USDD on TRON | $89.0 billion (derived) | $93.88 billion | Not yet published (all stablecoins: $94.46 billion, DefiLlama, 18 Oct) |
| Network fees | $699.4 million (Messari) | $701.4 million | Not yet published |
| Net TRX added | About 87 million (Messari, circulating supply) | 125.8 million | 22.9 million |
| Burns as share of issuance | 75.6% | 65.1% | 63.5% |
Sources: TRON DAO Q3 2026 report; Messari via Cointelegraph (10 August 2026) for second-quarter fees and supply; Coindaro calculation from Tronscan for October; DefiLlama for 18 October. The second-quarter USDT and USDD figure is derived by subtracting the reported $4.88 billion increase from the end-September total.
Burns now offset 65% of new TRX, down from 75.6% in the second quarter
TRON DAO does not hide the trend. Its report states that third-quarter burns offset 65.1% of issuance, down from 75.6% in the second quarter. The network generated 360.2 million TRX and burned 234.5 million, leaving 125.8 million of net new supply. What the daily Tronscan series adds is the consistency: not one day in the quarter, nor in the first half of October, broke the pattern, and the October ratio of 63.5% is lower again.
Fees did not collapse. TRON collected $701.4 million in the third quarter, with July at $234.6 million, August at $231.3 million and September at $235.5 million, according to TRON DAO. The average fee per transaction slipped to $0.643 from $0.668, and average daily fees fell 4.0% to $7.62 million. About 1.10 billion transactions went through in the quarter, flat on the second quarter but up 33.7% on a year earlier.
So the network earns roughly the same in dollars while burning a smaller share of what it issues. CryptoSlate summed up the result in one line:
“TRON can handle more dollar transfers without destroying more of its native token than it creates.” (CryptoSlate, 17 October 2026)
Why the TRX burn rate fell: the 2025 energy price cut and more staking
The main cause is a governance decision. In August 2025, TRON’s Super Representatives voted on Proposal 104 (filed as issue 789) to cut the price of one unit of energy, the resource that smart contract calls such as USDT transfers consume, from 210 sun to 100 sun, a reduction of about 52%. A sun is one millionth of a TRX. Cointelegraph reported on 27 August 2025 that 17 of the 27 Super Representatives had voted in favour, one short of the 18 needed, and that the proposal appeared likely to pass. The on-chain record, which Coindaro read through the TronGrid API on 18 October, settles the outcome: Proposal 104 was created on 26 August 2025, set the energy fee parameter to 100 sun and was approved by all 27 Super Representatives before voting closed at 12:00 UTC on 29 August. The fee tracker GasFeesNow and Cryptonews both give 29 August as the day the new price took effect.
The motive was cost. According to Cryptonews, TRX had climbed from about $0.12 in early 2024 to about $0.32 in the third quarter of 2025, which pushed the cost of a USDT transfer from about $1.64 to about $4.28 for users paying by burning TRX. A cheaper energy price was meant to keep TRON competitive as the main rail for USDT.
The trade-off was flagged before the vote. Cointelegraph noted that TRON was then deflationary, with about 76 million TRX burned on net, and warned:
“Reducing the rate to 100 sun could reverse that trend.” (Cointelegraph, 27 August 2025)
It did, but not overnight. The TRX burned per unit of energy halved at once, yet Tronscan’s daily series still shows a net burn for October 2025: 123.56 million TRX destroyed against 121.39 million issued, with burns ahead of issuance on 21 of the month’s 31 days. The ratio then slid almost every month.
| Month | TRX issued | TRX burned | Burn as share of issuance |
|---|---|---|---|
| October 2025 | 121,385,848 | 123,560,741 | 101.8% |
| December 2025 | 121,371,568 | 108,886,486 | 89.7% |
| March 2026 | 121,332,672 | 97,927,130 | 80.7% |
| June 2026 | 117,462,656 | 83,395,455 | 71.0% |
| September 2026 | 117,458,032 | 70,898,043 | 60.4% |
Source: Coindaro calculation from the Tronscan API, queried 18 October 2026.
A second force works more quietly. TRON users can pay for transactions in two ways: burn TRX on the spot, or stake TRX to receive energy and bandwidth that refill over a rolling 24 hours. Every transfer paid with staked resources burns nothing. TRON DAO’s first-quarter 2026 report attributed an 11% fall in the burn ratio mainly to users choosing to stake for resources rather than burn. At the end of September, 45.71 billion TRX was staked, 18.87 billion of it for energy and 26.84 billion for bandwidth, a staking ratio of 48.16% against 48.23% in the second quarter.
The energy price has not moved since. TRON’s chain parameters still read 100 sun per unit of energy, 8 TRX per block for the producer and 128 TRX per block for voters, values set by Proposal 102 in June 2025. The three proposals filed after Proposal 104, the latest on 25 August 2026, dealt with other parameters, and none was open on 18 October. CryptoSlate points out that the reward settings can be changed by vote, which is the other lever that would close the gap.
How TRX issuance and burning work
TRON runs on a form of proof of stake. TRX holders vote for 27 Super Representatives, who produce blocks in turn. Each block creates new TRX: 8 TRX for the block producer and 128 TRX shared among voters, according to TRON’s chain parameters. That flow is the issuance side, and it is close to constant. Our explainer on staking covers the general mechanism.
The burn side comes from fees. Simple TRX transfers use bandwidth; token transfers and other smart contract calls use energy as well. An account without enough staked resources pays the shortfall by burning TRX at the energy and bandwidth prices set by governance. A lower energy price therefore means fewer TRX burned per USDT transfer, however many transfers there are. Whether supply then rises or falls depends on the balance of the two flows.
For readers new to the topic, the dollars themselves are not TRON’s token. USDT is issued by Tether and simply lives on TRON as a TRC-20 token; our guide to what stablecoins are explains how they hold their peg. Settlement volume measures how many of those dollars move, not how much TRX is destroyed in moving them.
What the supply data do not tell you
A rising supply is not, on its own, a verdict on the network. At 0.13% in a quarter, TRX’s net issuance is modest, and it pays the validators and voters who secure the chain. Nothing in the data shows how much of the newly issued TRX is sold, staked again or held by its recipients. Coindaro has not analysed the reward flows of individual Super Representatives.
Some definitions also remain open. Tronscan carries a separate, cumulative figure for TRX burned in connection with USDD, about 9.0 billion TRX, which is not part of the daily burn series used here. Because our daily totals match TRON DAO’s quarterly figures exactly, we treat the two as the same series, but neither source explains the boundary in detail.
Then there is the market context. Other outlets have linked TRX’s price to its supply, but no time-stamped TRX price was part of this analysis, and this piece quotes none. The quarterly report itself shows demand holding up: average monthly active addresses rose 9.8% to 18 million, and about 11,100 accounts deployed contracts, up 8.8%. New addresses averaged 178,641 a day, down 3.5%.
What it changes for TRON USDT users and TRX holders
For people who send USDT on TRON, the 2025 cut is the reason transfers are cheaper than they would otherwise be: the average fee per transaction was $0.643 in the third quarter, according to TRON DAO. Users who stake TRX for energy pay less again in burned tokens, at the cost of locking their TRX.
For TRX holders, the change is that the token no longer benefits mechanically from rising stablecoin traffic. Before the cut, more USDT transfers meant more TRX destroyed, and supply fell. Since then, activity has grown and supply has grown with it. The two now move almost independently, and any return to net deflation would need either a large rise in fee-paying activity, a higher energy price or a lower reward per block.
In the European Union the question for USDT users is access, not fees. Tether has not obtained MiCA authorisation for USDT, a dollar token that MiCA would treat as an e-money token: Forklog reported in June 2026 that Tether chose not to apply because of the regulation’s reserve rules.
On 8 October 2026, ESMA published an opinion telling national regulators that crypto-asset service providers authorised under MiCA should stop providing services related to non-MiCA-compliant stablecoins to EU clients, custody and transfers included. Remaining holdings must be dealt with within three months, by 8 January 2027, and services may continue only to help clients exit. ESMA names no token. Coinbase has listed USDT as non-compliant and asked EEA customers to withdraw affected balances by 30 October, Cointelegraph reported. Our piece on the ESMA deadline for non-MiCA stablecoins covers the timetable. None of this changes how USDT moves on the TRON chain itself.
The next data points to watch
The streak extends with every day Tronscan publishes. A single day on which burns reach 3.9 million TRX would break it; the highest daily burn since 1 July was about 3.36 million, and the last day above issuance was 15 June. TRON DAO and Messari usually publish fourth-quarter reports in January, which will show whether the October ratio of 63.5% held for the full quarter. Any Super Representative proposal to change the energy price or the block rewards would be the first sign that governance wants to change the balance, and none was on record when we checked on 18 October.