TRON says it delivered counter-cyclical growth in the first half of 2026, combining record stablecoin liquidity and expanding decentralised finance activity with a rapid push into artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The network’s strategy report says its DeFi base continued to strengthen despite a broader crypto-market slowdown, while new AI products created additional routes for ecosystem expansion.
Global digital-asset markets experienced a macroeconomic cooling during the first six months of the year as tighter liquidity and investment rotations towards traditional AI technology weighed on many crypto sectors. TRON, however, reported growth across its ecosystem, led by its stablecoin settlement layer, DeFi protocols and emerging Web3 AI stack.
Circulating USDT on TRON passed $90bn during H1, reaching successive all-time highs as it moved towards the $100bn mark. That growth came while the global market capitalisation of USDT remained broadly flat.
TRON described the increase as evidence of its position as a leading settlement network for digital dollars. The network’s stablecoin infrastructure provides low-cost liquidity for applications operating on its blockchain and remains the main liquidity engine for the ecosystem.
The report said TRON’s two-part strategy was to reinforce DeFi through recurring value-accrual mechanisms while building a full-stack AI ecosystem. Core DeFi projects introduced programme-based buyback-and-burn systems across liquidity infrastructure, lending, oracle services and decentralised storage, while also upgrading trading, lending, data-feed and compute products.
According to DeFiLlama data cited in the report, TRON’s DeFi total value locked rose above $5.18bn by 1 September. That placed it among the five largest public blockchains globally and narrowed its gap with Solana and BSC. TRON also said it overtook those networks during peak trading periods.
User activity was described as an even stronger area of performance. TRON recorded more than 3.88 million active addresses over a 24-hour period, nearly twice the figure reported for second-placed BSC.
SUN.io expands trading products and token burns
SUN.io introduced changes to its branding, product range and tokenomics during H1.
In January, it launched a dual-brand structure aimed at supporting international growth. The Chinese identity “Sun Wukong” (孙悟空) was introduced alongside a localised official website. SunSwap was renamed “Wukong Swap”, SunPump became “Wukong Launch”, and SunX adopted the “Sun Wukong” brand.
The structure brings spot decentralised exchange trading, memecoin issuance and perpetuals under one wider DeFi framework intended to reach users in Western and Asian markets.
SunSwap V4 went live on 2 March with six core architectural changes. The upgrade increased the protocol’s customisation options and was designed to support new DeFi applications. Within five months, peak liquidity had stabilised at $108m, while 24-hour trading volumes regularly exceeded $70m during busy periods.
A further upgrade to the Universal Router contract in May improved capital efficiency by automatically directing trades through the most suitable combination of liquidity pools.
SUN.io reported total TVL of about $650m across more than 26,500 active liquidity pools as of 1 September. Trading volume exceeded $514m over the previous seven days, spread across more than 112,000 transactions.
The platform also expanded the sources of revenue used for SUN token burns. From the 50th buyback-and-burn round on 25 April, income from SunX was added permanently to the burn pool alongside fees from SunSwap V2 and SunPump.
SUN.io also standardised its timetable for announcing the burns, moving to a single notice issued in the middle of the first month of each quarter.
Since the buyback-and-burn programme began in December 2021, the platform has completed 51 consecutive rounds. A total of 678,547,188.32 SUN has been removed from circulation, taking the token closer to the 700 million deflation milestone.
JustLend DAO reports growth in JST and lending activity
JustLend DAO used protocol revenue to conduct several JST buyback-and-burn rounds during H1. The report said the mechanism connected operating income to programmed token deflation and strengthened the role of JST within the ecosystem.
JST rose from $0.04 at the start of 2026 to a peak of $0.11, representing a cumulative increase of 275%. Its market capitalisation increased from $400m to more than $868m, its highest valuation since 2022. The token was trading at $0.101 on 1 September.
Three large scheduled burns have been completed since the beginning of the year, with more than $20m deployed in each. More than $70m was allocated to buybacks during H1, with almost 90% coming from JustLend DAO’s operating net revenue.
A major burn funded by protocol revenue and accumulated USDJ stability fees represented 3.59% of the total JST supply.
JustLend DAO has completed four major buyback-and-burn rounds in total, permanently removing 1.711 billion JST. That represents 17.29% of the token’s total supply and more than $94.62m in cumulative capital.
Apart from a special $10.39m burn from accumulated USDJ stability fees in Round 4, the report said all regular buyback funding came from JustLend DAO’s business revenue.
Official figures cited by the project show cumulative net revenue of more than $94.2m. Including stability fees, the amount generated for repurchases approaches $105m. A further $10.34m in accumulated revenue has already been reserved for the next scheduled buyback-and-burn event.
JustLend DAO’s product suite includes Supply & Borrow Markets (SBM), sTRX liquid staking, Energy Rental, Gas-Free Transfers (GasFree), and Buy Energy.
DeFiLlama data for 1 September showed SBM TVL of $3.38bn, making it the fourth-largest decentralised lending protocol in the world. SBM V2 launched in June with isolated vaults, expanding supported assets while strengthening security. A dedicated $U lending market was also introduced during H1.
The sTRX liquid-staking product held more than 9.73 billion staked TRX across more than 17,000 addresses. Its Energy Rental service offered users a pay-as-you-go alternative to locking large TRX balances to reduce on-chain costs, attracting more than 80,000 participants.
Buy Energy launched in August, allowing users to purchase TRON Energy when required. JustLend DAO said the service can reduce transaction fees by as much as 64% compared with burning TRX for on-chain resources.
GasFree Transfers allows users to pay fees in the token being transferred rather than holding native TRX. It supports USDT and, following an August integration, USDD.
CryptoQuant’s TRON Q2 report showed GasFree transfer volume of $2.9bn in the final week of June, close to its early-May record of $3bn. By 1 September, cumulative stablecoin transfers using the service had exceeded 7.7 million transactions and $132.6bn in volume.
Users had saved more than $8.48m in transaction fees, according to the report.
JustLend DAO was integrated into the Binance Web3 Wallet DeFi hub on 6 July, with dedicated liquidity pools created to reach Binance’s global user base. It later joined USDD and SUN.io to run the “TRON DeFi Summer” campaign with Binance Wallet. The campaign carried a $4.5m prize pool.
BitTorrent adds AI computing network
BitTorrent reported progress in compliance, product development and tokenomics during H1.
On 6 March, the U.S. SEC dropped all charges against Justin Sun, the TRON Foundation and the BitTorrent Foundation. The decision ended a three-year dispute and removed what the report described as a longstanding source of regulatory uncertainty.
BTT was subsequently listed against Thai Baht on Bitkub, allowing users to trade the token directly in the local fiat currency and increasing its regional liquidity in Southeast Asia.
BitTorrent Neo, a native macOS client, launched on 5 June. The lightweight product was designed to modernise the peer-to-peer file-sharing experience without reducing performance.
On 17 June, BitTorrent entered decentralised AI computing with BTTInferGrid. The DePIN network is designed for AI inference workloads and uses BitTorrent’s global distributed-node infrastructure to combine idle GPU capacity and bandwidth.
The project said BTTInferGrid could make compute supply more efficient by converting fragmented hardware into a standardised pool.
BitTorrent also introduced a BTT buyback-and-burn programme. Under an update announced on 6 July, all revenue from its decentralised businesses is directed into a dedicated pool for routine quarterly burns. The change is intended to link BTT’s value directly to protocol revenue and turn it from a utility and governance token into a deflationary asset supported by network activity.
WINkLink broadens oracle services
WINkLink upgraded its oracle infrastructure during H1, adding new data services, expanding its supported assets and introducing a token-burn mechanism.
A new Market Statistics module was added to the Price Service page on 27 March. It displays market-cap ranking, circulating and total supply, and 24-hour and seven-day price ranges.
The network added $U price feeds, including U/TRX and U/USD pairs, on 13 April. KGST price feeds and the KGST/TRX pair followed on 9 June.
On 6 July, WINkLink announced that all revenue from providing oracle services to the TRON ecosystem would be used to buy back and burn WIN. Burn information is to be disclosed around the middle of the following quarter.
WIN rose from about $0.00002055 to $0.00002514 on 29 July, a gain of 22.5%.
The token was listed on Thailand’s Bitkub exchange on 30 January and on Baltex on 28 February.
TRON builds three-tier AI ecosystem
TRON’s AI expansion gathered pace with the launches of Bank of AI in February, B.AI in April and BTTInferGrid in June.
The report presents the ecosystem as a three-layer structure. B.AI provides access to multiple AI models, Bank of AI and AINFT supply services for AI agents, and BTTInferGrid provides decentralised computing power.
B.AI is positioned as a gateway between Web2 and Web3, offering access to multiple large language models through a single interface and API. It supports model switching and includes BAIclaw, a desktop AI agent, BAIcode, a coding assistant, the x402 payment standard and the 8004 identity protocol.
By 1 September, B.AI had more than 2.2 million registered users, four months after its launch. Daily token throughput passed 1.1 trillion on 31 August.
The platform offers models including ChatGPT’s GPT-5.4/5.5/5.6 series, Claude’s Opus, Sonnet and Haiku series, Gemini Flash and Pro, and Grok 4.5. It also includes MiniMax M2.7/M3, DeepSeek V4, Kimi K2.5/K2.6/K3, Zhipu GLM 5.1/5.2/5.3, Qwen 3.6/3.8, Tencent Hy3 and MiMo V2.5/V2.5 Pro.
Its Auto Smart Routing tool selects a model according to the task, its complexity and cost. A Leaderboard shows usage and user ratings.
Developers can use one API key to reach every model on the platform. B.AI supports Web2 sign-in through Google and Web3 wallets on TRON, Ethereum, BNB Chain, Optimism, Arbitrum and Solana.
Payments can be made using Visa, WeChat Pay, Alipay and UnionPay, as well as wallets including TronLink, Binance Wallet, OKX Wallet, MetaMask and Trust Wallet.
B.AI has partnered with Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, MiniMax, Biconomy, MoonPay, Pundi X Labs, KuCoin Web3 Wallet, Symbiosis, CROSS and deBridge.
A free-access campaign launched on 17 August offered unlimited access to six models: GLM-5.3-Flash (Ox Alpha), Qwen3.8-Flash, DeepSeek-V4-Flash, DeepSeek-V4-Flash-Vision-Exp, Tencent Hy3 and Xiaomi MiMo-V2.5.
During the campaign’s first 14 days, token throughput reached 6.86 trillion and more than 196,000 new API users joined.
Bank of AI, launched in February, is designed to give AI agents the ability to carry out financial activity. Its tools include x402, 8004, MCP Server, Skills and OpenClaw Extension. Developers and no-code users can add automated payments, identity verification and DeFi functions through code or natural-language prompts.
Its MCP Server and Skills framework supports TRON, Ethereum and BNB Chain. Agents can access data and interact with SUN.io, JustLend DAO, Uniswap and PancakeSwap to conduct swaps, lending, yield farming and cross-chain arbitrage.
AINFT is intended to become a trading hub for AI agents. Its planned benchmark platform will use simulated market data for assets including BTC and ETH to assess returns, loss limits, maximum drawdown, stability, alpha generation and decision-making.
AINFT has not officially launched, although a preview version is available on its website. Product updates are available through @AINFT on X.
BTTInferGrid currently supports Qwen3.6 27B, Qwen2.5 7B Instruct and Meta Llama 3.1 8B Instruct, which can be accessed through B.AI. Standardised APIs for on-demand compute scheduling are expected to be released soon.
The longer-term plan is for BTTInferGrid to combine compute, storage and smart contracts from 2028 onwards, supporting AI agents and automated applications.
TRON also joined the Linux Foundation’s Agentic AI Foundation as a Gold Member in March, alongside OpenAI, Anthropic, Circle and JPMorgan Chase.
At Malaysia Blockchain Week 2026, TRON founder Justin Sun described the network as a potential link between AI and finance. He said DeFi, TradFi and AI were converging around common assets, payment systems and user bases, with TRON infrastructure expected to play a central role in a financial system involving institutions, open blockchains and AI.
TRON said its mature DeFi base, supported by protocol revenue, product development and token deflation, provides the users and income needed to fund its AI expansion. The network’s wider ecosystem includes SUN.io’s trading products, JustLend DAO’s lending, liquid staking and energy services, the USDD stablecoin, WINkLink’s oracle infrastructure and BitTorrent’s file-transfer and computing networks.
The company’s H1 2026 strategy report was supplied by TRON Eco Team Singapore. It was sponsored content presented by TRON DAO and published by CryptoSlate. The material contains promotional messaging and is not investment advice.
