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Ryan Moore 2024 was a big year for Tron—not just because of its continued dominance with USDT, but because DeFi finally took off in a meaningful way on the network. And leading the charge? SunSwap, Tron’s homegrown decentralized exchange, which saw a staggering 8.3 million transactions in the second half of the year.
USDT Still Rules… But There’s a Shift Happening
Let’s not kid ourselves—USDT is still king on Tron. According to CryptoQuant, the supply of Tether on Tron jumped from $48B to $62B, and the total transfer volume climbed from $362B to $576B. That’s not small potatoes.
USDT still makes up 99% of all token activity on the chain. But here’s the twist: Tron is no longer only the chain of stablecoin transfers. Something new is brewing.
SunSwap Sparks a DeFi Comeback
While stablecoin activity stayed strong, SunSwap quietly became the heart of Tron’s DeFi revival. By August, it was handling 4 million transactions per month—and the numbers only kept growing. From August to December, swap activity doubled, bringing in over 8.3 million transactions.
A huge chunk of that (over 80%) involved WTRX, the wrapped version of Tron’s native token. WTRX swap volume jumped from 4.2 billion to 20 billion units, equal to around $4.1 billion. That’s serious traction.
Meme Coin Madness
Adding fuel to the fire, Tron launched SunPump, a meme coin generator that made it ridiculously easy to create new tokens. And create they did—94,000 new tokens hit the blockchain in just a few months. This brought even more transactions and helped diversify network activity beyond just stablecoins.
Tron Overtakes Bitcoin (In One Key Metric)
Here’s something nobody saw coming: Tron became the most-used payment blockchain, beating out even Bitcoin. It ended the year with 31.5% of all blockchain payment transactions. That’s a huge milestone.
But surprisingly, this didn’t do much for TRX’s price.
TRX Struggles Despite Growth
TRX made a short-lived comeback last year, breaking into the top 10 by market cap and sparking hope for a full-on recovery. It hit $0.43 at its peak—but then the market cooled off.
By year’s end, TRX had dropped nearly 50% to $0.225, and any hopes of holding support at $0.23 quickly faded.
Tron’s underlying metrics are looking stronger than ever—but price? Still not catching up. For now, it seems like adoption is outpacing speculation, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
David Rich 
