What is the TRC-20 standard?

TRC-20 is TRON's token standard for smart contract-based tokens. It mirrors Ethereum's ERC-20 standard in its core function signatures: transfer, approve, transferFrom, balanceOf, and allowance all work the same way. This compatibility means that a developer familiar with ERC-20 can work with TRC-20 with minimal adjustment, and that wallets and exchanges can support both standards with relatively small changes to their integration code.

Any token issued on the TRON blockchain uses either TRC-10 or TRC-20. TRC-10 is a simpler standard that operates at the protocol level without requiring a smart contract. TRC-20 is the more capable standard, equivalent to ERC-20, and is what USDT and most serious DeFi tokens on TRON use.

TRC-20 vs ERC-20 vs BEP-20

The three dominant token standards in crypto differ primarily in their cost and speed characteristics.

	TRC-20 (TRON)	ERC-20 (Ethereum)	BEP-20 (BNB Chain)
Block time	~3 seconds	~12 seconds	~3 seconds
Typical transfer fee	$1–$3.50	$5–$30+	Under $0.10
Smart contract language	Solidity (TVM)	Solidity (EVM)	Solidity (EVM)
USDT supply	~46% of total	~45% of total	Smaller share

For stablecoin transfers where the sender wants speed and low cost, TRC-20 has been the practical choice since Tether launched USDT-TRC20 in 2019. For DeFi applications requiring deep liquidity and the broadest ecosystem of protocols, ERC-20 on Ethereum remains the standard.

Why USDT chose TRON for cheap stablecoin transfers

Tether launched USDT on TRON using the TRC-20 standard in April 2019. The decision was economic. USDT on Ethereum was already widely held, but fees on the Ethereum mainnet made small transfers impractical. A $50 USDT transfer paying $10 in gas is a 20% cost. The same transfer on TRON costs fractions of a dollar.

For the users who needed USDT most, people sending remittances in emerging markets, traders moving between exchanges, and businesses settling cross-border invoices, the cost difference mattered enormously. Adoption grew fast. By 2021, USDT on TRON had exceeded USDT on Ethereum by transaction count. By 2024, it exceeded Ethereum's USDT supply by market cap.

As of Q1 2026, TRON holds over $85 billion in USDT, representing more than 46% of the total USDT supply globally.

How TRON's Energy and Bandwidth model works

Most blockchains charge a gas fee on every transaction. TRON handles resource allocation differently.

When you stake TRX, you receive two types of resources: Energy and Bandwidth. Bandwidth covers the data space a transaction uses. Energy covers the computational cost of running smart contracts. If your wallet has sufficient Energy and Bandwidth, a transaction costs nothing beyond the TRX already staked. This model makes frequent, small transactions essentially free for users who maintain a staked position.

For users who do not stake, a standard transaction will consume a small amount of TRX from the wallet directly. The cost is still low by any standard, typically between $0.001 and $0.01 for a simple transfer, but the staking model makes TRON particularly efficient for high-volume users like exchanges and businesses processing large numbers of stablecoin transfers.

Top TRC-20 tokens beyond USDT

USDT dominates TRON's token ecosystem by a wide margin, but several other TRC-20 tokens are worth knowing.

USDD is TRON's native stablecoin, launched on 5 May 2022. It is overcollateralised and managed by the TRON DAO Reserve. Its current market cap sits at around $476 million as of early 2026.

JST is the governance and utility token of JustLend, TRON's largest lending protocol. JustLend allows users to supply assets to earn interest and borrow against collateral, similar to Aave on Ethereum.

SUN is the governance token of the SunSwap decentralised exchange, which handles token swaps on TRON and has expanded into perpetual trading.

BTT is the BitTorrent token, used to incentivise file-sharing and seeding on the BitTorrent network, which TRON acquired in 2018.

TRC-20 Tokens and Why USDT Settles on TRON