Part 1 / Page 2

‍

Key Team Members

Technical Leads: Tron’s blockchain and client are maintained by a core team of developers (names less publicly documented). Historically, Chen Chang (CTO) and Jerry Wang (former CFO, ex-Huobi) were cited in media as leaders. The development team has steadily released upgrades (Tron v4/Venus in 2019, v5/StarGraph in 2020) that increased TPS and security. They also built the Tron Virtual Machine (TVM) for smart contracts and integrated standard Web3 tooling. Recent innovation includes tuning DPoS block producers and refining staking/rewards.

Product and Operations: Tron’s product managers and marketers (again, not all public names) drive the ecosystem’s growth. They oversee Tron wallets (TronLink, TronWallet), developer tools, and partnerships (e.g. Binance listing, Poloniex integration). Community managers coordinate global events and education (Tron 20/20 campaigns). In mid-2024, after Sun’s retirement as CEO, Ryan (Larry) Yang reportedly took on managerial responsibilities, while Sun remains Chairman (Justin Sun - Wikipedia). The team also includes regional leads in Asia and a growing presence globally. Achievements include reaching tens of millions of accounts on Tron, and supporting an active developer community with grants and hackathons.

Advisors and Investors

Tron has enlisted prominent industry advisors (though concrete names are scarce in public sources). In 2018, it was reported that Jihan Wu (Bitmain co-founder) and Adam Draper (Boost VC) were Tron advisors – lending crypto/VC credibility (though these were brief associations). Sun’s personal network brings in high-profile figures: he has met global leaders and celebrities (e.g., Justin Bieber, Bill Clinton) to promote Tron. Financial backers include Asian VC firms and funds; for example, the acquisition of Poloniex hinted at backing from Huobi’s XEx (HTX) venture. The co-investment of Tron DAO in World Liberty Financial tokens (Tron Bulls Eye $1, TRXUSDT Up 15% as DeFi TVL Hits $4.6B) suggests a strategic partnership avenue. Tron’s earliest ICO investors (Qatar’s Mars Finance, Galaxy Digital in crypto, etc.) remain supporters.

In terms of influence, these advisors and investors provide connections to mining firms (Bitmain), crypto exchanges (Huobi/HTX), and media. However, unlike some projects, Tron’s ecosystem has not publicly published an extensive advisory board list. That said, its funding rounds (even if off-chain) have been robust – aside from the $70M ICO (Justin Sun - Wikipedia), internal reports indicate another $1B reserve built by Tron DAO (accumulated via ecosystem activities) to fund development and marketing. This substantial war chest (allegedly over $2B in reserves including other cryptos (Tron Bulls Eye $1, TRXUSDT Up 15% as DeFi TVL Hits $4.6B)) is a key resource for the project.

Team and Progress

Development Progress: The team has delivered all promised core features to date. Tron’s blockchain supports smart contracts, decentralized storage (via BitTorrent/BTFS), and fast consensus. Key milestones:

• 2017 ICO: TRX token raised $70M (Justin Sun - Wikipedia).
  
  
• June 2018: Mainnet launch, token swap (TRX moved off Ethereum).
  
  
• 2018: Acquisition of BitTorrent (Justin Sun - Wikipedia), launch of BTT token.
  
  
• 2019: Partnerships with Opera (crypto browser), major exchanges listing (Binance, Coinbase Custody for USDT on Tron).
  
  
• 2021-22: Introduction of DeFi platform JustSwap (Uniswap clone), launch of USDD stablecoin and TRON DAO Reserve to back it.
  
  
• Ongoing (2023-25): Network upgrades (performance, privacy features), expansion of DApp ecosystem.
  
  

Metrics & Usage: As of 2025, Tron consistently ranks in the top 10 blockchains by usage. It boasts hundreds of millions of daily transactions (often more than Ethereum, due to micropayment usage). Tron’s Wallet users are estimated in the tens of millions worldwide. DeFiLlama cites over $4.9B TVL on Tron (Tron Bulls Eye $1, TRXUSDT Up 15% as DeFi TVL Hits $4.6B), highlighting strong DeFi uptake. Over 1000+ DApps have been built on Tron (games, exchanges, lending protocols). Its social stats (Twitter followers, Telegram community) are among the largest in crypto (though highly driven by Justin Sun’s personal brand). These metrics show a network that is growing (TVL and user count) even during market downturns.

Governance Structure

Tron uses a Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) model. Token holders stake TRX to vote for 27 Super Representatives (SRs), who produce blocks and govern protocol changes. Votes are weighted by stake, so the more TRX one stakes, the more voting power. The Tron DAO Reserve (governed by the Tron community and Sun’s oversight) holds a treasury of crypto assets (including Bitcoin, USDT, Tron itself) which can be used for incentives or defense of the network (e.g. to back the USDD stablecoin). In theory, major protocol changes (hard forks) occur only with SR consensus and community support. In practice, Justin Sun and the Tron Foundation team have significant influence over SRs and proposals (Tron’s governance is seen as relatively centralized).

Operationally, Tron has a Tron Council (the 27 SRs) that meets regularly to discuss network upgrades. Proposals (e.g. changes to staking parameters, activation of features) can be submitted by SRs or the Tron DAO and voted on. The governance model does not have a formal treasury spend vote (like some DAOs), but the Tron DAO Reserve (controlled by Sun and key stakeholders) funds development grants and partnerships. Compared to Ethereum’s open SIG (EIPs), Tron governance is faster (due to fewer decision-makers) but less decentralized.

Team and Governance Risks

The centralization of power is the primary concern. Justin Sun is the largest TRX holder and effectively controls the Tron DAO Reserve, giving him outsized influence over the project’s direction. If his interests diverge from public investors’, that creates risk. The SR-based voting system can also be gamed if a few large stakeholders coordinate. Indeed, some SR seats have been held by teams affiliated with Sun. This means network upgrades and funding decisions may reflect the founder’s strategy more than broad consensus.

Another risk is succession and continuity. In late 2021 Sun “retired” as CEO to become Grenada’s ambassador; he recently stepped down from diplomatic role, with uncertainty about Tron management’s future composition (Justin Sun - Wikipedia). If leadership shifts or infighting occurs (there were past lawsuits from former employees, ultimately settled privately), development momentum could slow. Additionally, governance transparency is an issue: Tron Foundation has not always published detailed progress reports or financials, so investors have limited visibility into how funds (e.g. ICO proceeds, DAO Reserve) are used. This contrasts with projects that have open foundations with audited budgets.

Conclusion

Strengths: Tron’s technology is solid (high throughput, low fees) and its ecosystem is large and growing (DeFi TVL nearly $5B (Tron Bulls Eye $1, TRXUSDT Up 15% as DeFi TVL Hits $4.6B), millions of users). The team, led by Justin Sun, has delivered on major milestones and continues aggressive expansion. Tron benefits from high-profile partnerships (BitTorrent, World Liberty Financial investments (Tron Bulls Eye $1, TRXUSDT Up 15% as DeFi TVL Hits $4.6B)), a healthy treasury, and a strong narrative of bridging Asia and crypto. Its consensus model enables fast upgrades, and the DAO Reserve provides financial backing for growth.

Weaknesses: Tron’s growth comes with controversy. The network is relatively centralized under Sun’s vision, and the recent SEC charges (SEC.gov | SEC Charges Crypto Entrepreneur Justin Sun and His Companies for Fraud and Other Securities Law Violations ) cast a shadow on its operations. Governance is not fully decentralized, potentially deterring some investors. Tech-wise, Tron has less developer mindshare than Ethereum, so innovation may lag. The team’s opacity on budgets and internal structure is a corporate governance risk.

Overall, Tron’s team and project display ambition and execution capability, but face significant governance and regulatory challenges. This duality—strong leadership and momentum vs. concentrated control and legal scrutiny—defines its current position. In risk/return terms, Tron is a high-risk/high-potential investment that requires careful oversight of its ongoing developments and court outcomes.

Sources: Justin Sun’s Wikipedia page and SEC press release for foundational and legal details (Justin Sun - Wikipedia) (SEC.gov | SEC Charges Crypto Entrepreneur Justin Sun and His Companies for Fraud and Other Securities Law Violations ); industry analyses and DeFi tracking (99Bitcoins/DeFiLlama) for network metrics (Tron Bulls Eye $1, TRXUSDT Up 15% as DeFi TVL Hits $4.6B); Binance/cryptocurrency news for TVL ranking and ecosystem context (cited above). These provide up-to-date, quantifiable insights into Tron’s market position and challenges.

‍

‍

3. Technology & Infrastructure

Blockchain Type: TRON is a public, layer-1 blockchain originally designed as an Ethereum-compatible network tailored for high-throughput dApps and media content platforms (documentation/English_Documentation/TRON_Introduction/TRON_Brochure.md at master · tronprotocol/documentation · GitHub) (What is Tron, and how does it work? A beginner’s guide). It uses the TRON Virtual Machine (TVM), a lightweight, Turing-complete VM compatible with Ethereum’s EVM. Developers can write smart contracts in Solidity (via TVM) or Java, and deploy them on TRON’s JVM-like environment (documentation/English_Documentation/TRON_Virtual_Machine/Virtual_Machine_Introduction.md at master · tronprotocol/documentation · GitHub) (What is Tron, and how does it work? A beginner’s guide). Unlike Ethereum’s gas-based fee model, TRON’s TVM introduces bandwidth and energy resources: each account gets free daily bandwidth points, and users can freeze TRX to gain bandwidth or energy for transactions and contracts (Energy and Bandwidth of TRON – OneKey - Support) (What is Tron, and how does it work? A beginner’s guide). In practice, this makes TRON transactions extremely cheap (often free) compared to Ethereum’s fees. TRON’s design emphasizes high throughput and low fees, aiming to be “ideal for large-scale DApp and contract applications” (Energy and Bandwidth of TRON – OneKey - Support) (What is Tron, and how does it work? A beginner’s guide). Its blockchain type is effectively a modified, delegated-Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) network with Ethereum-like smart-contract support – chosen to maximize scalability and speed for consumer-facing apps.

Network Architecture: TRON’s protocol is organized in a three-layer architecture (documentation/English_Documentation/TRON_Introduction/TRON_Brochure.md at master · tronprotocol/documentation · GitHub):

• Storage Layer: A high-performance distributed storage system (using KhaosDB and Protobuf) that holds the ledger state, blocks, and transaction data in a customized graph database (documentation/English_Documentation/TRON_Introduction/TRON_Brochure.md at master · tronprotocol/documentation · GitHub).
  
  
• Core Layer: Implements the TRON Virtual Machine (TVM), smart contract execution, account model, and the DPoS consensus engine (documentation/English_Documentation/TRON_Introduction/TRON_Brochure.md at master · tronprotocol/documentation · GitHub). TVM is optimized for stability and low resource use (documentation/English_Documentation/TRON_Virtual_Machine/Virtual_Machine_Introduction.md at master · tronprotocol/documentation · GitHub). Account permissions and smart contracts reside here.
  
  
• Application Layer: Interfaces, wallets and DApp support. It allows multiple programming-language clients (via Google Protobuf) to build on TRON (documentation/English_Documentation/TRON_Introduction/TRON_Brochure.md at master · tronprotocol/documentation · GitHub).
  
  

In practice, TRON nodes run as full nodes or Super Representative (SR) nodes. There are 27 elected SRs at any time (plus numerous candidate SRs) which form the backbone of the network (Kiln joins TRON Network as newest Super Representative | by TRON DAO | Mar, 2025 | Medium). Ordinary full nodes help relay transactions and blocks, but only SR nodes produce blocks. Data flows in a P2P mesh: transactions broadcast to nodes, then SRs bundle transactions into blocks every ~3 seconds. This architecture yields very fast finality and high throughput (up to ~2,000+ TPS), far above Ethereum’s ~15 TPS (What is Tron, and how does it work? A beginner’s guide) (TRON Price (TRX)). TRON also supports “sidechain” or DAppChain extensions (the Sun Network) to offload work from the mainnet (TRON Officially Launches Its SideChain Scalability Solution 'The Sun Network') (TRON Officially Launches Its SideChain Scalability Solution 'The Sun Network').

Consensus Mechanism (DPoS): TRON employs Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS). All TRX holders can vote (staking = freezing TRX gives "Tron Power") for SR candidates (Super Representatives). The 27 candidates with the most votes become active Super Representatives. These SRs run block-producing nodes and are “trusted nodes” maintaining security and governance (Kiln joins TRON Network as newest Super Representative | by TRON DAO | Mar, 2025 | Medium). Each block (every ~3s) is produced by one SR in round-robin. In addition, ranks 28–127 serve as SR partners (e.g. backup block verifiers). Block production rewards (16 TRX per block) go to the producer, and another 160 TRX per block is shared among all SRs and their voters (Super Representatives). Voters then receive a share of the SR rewards (after a small commission). Because only 27 nodes produce blocks, TRON achieves high efficiency and speed, with blocks confirmed in ~3 seconds. This allows thousands of transactions per block and up to ~2,000 TPS throughput (What is Tron, and how does it work? A beginner’s guide) (TRON Price (TRX)). The DPoS design was chosen to maximize scalability and energy efficiency compared to Nakamoto PoW or pure PoS. By having a small, rotating set of powerful validators, TRON can finalize quickly and support high transaction volumes – a core advantage over Bitcoin or Ethereum’s slower consensus.

(Benchmarking:) In contrast, Ethereum (pre-2.0) used PoW (~7 TPS) and now PoS (~15 TPS) (What is Tron, and how does it work? A beginner’s guide), Solana uses a hybrid Proof-of-History with PoS (claiming up to 65,000 TPS but typically few hundred under load), and BNB Chain (formerly BSC) uses Proof-of-Staked-Authority with 21 validators (max ~100 TPS). TRON’s DPoS yields greater raw throughput than Ethereum or BNB, though centralization is higher.

Scalability Solutions and Performance: By design, TRON’s base layer supports extremely high throughput. Its native TPS is quoted around 2,000 (far above Ethereum’s ~15) (What is Tron, and how does it work? A beginner’s guide) (TRON Price (TRX)), with block time ~3 seconds. Real-world metrics support this: TRON routinely processes millions of transactions per day (e.g. ~2.8 million daily tx in early 2025 (TRON DAO Daily Active Addresses Nearing All-Time High | Flash News Detail | Blockchain.News)) while maintaining low latency and stable confirmation times. Every account gets 5,000 free bandwidth points daily, and transactions consume bandwidth rather than fees until depleted (Energy and Bandwidth of TRON – OneKey - Support). Complex contracts consume “energy” (also obtained by freezing TRX) (Energy and Bandwidth of TRON – OneKey - Support). This resource model ensures that normal user activity remains virtually free and fast, preventing spam without high user fees. TRON’s TVM also has fixed step costs, improving stability (documentation/English_Documentation/TRON_Virtual_Machine/Virtual_Machine_Introduction.md at master · tronprotocol/documentation · GitHub).

Beyond the base chain, TRON has layer-2 scaling via its Sun Network and DApp side-chains (TRON Officially Launches Its SideChain Scalability Solution 'The Sun Network') (TRON Officially Launches Its SideChain Scalability Solution 'The Sun Network'). Announced in 2019, the Sun Network allows independent side-chains (DAppChains) to handle specific workloads (e.g. game logic, microtransactions) and periodically commit to the mainnet, “further expand[ing] the overall capacity” (TRON Officially Launches Its SideChain Scalability Solution 'The Sun Network'). Justin Sun promised Sun Network would “improve overall TPS and smart contract execution efficiency” (TRON Officially Launches Its SideChain Scalability Solution 'The Sun Network'). These side-chains are also DPoS-based and can interoperate with the mainnet, potentially enabling “unlimited” scaling for DApps (TRON Officially Launches Its SideChain Scalability Solution 'The Sun Network'). Moreover, TRON’s cross-chain solutions (such as the BitTorrent Chain, BTTC) allow assets and data flow between TRON and Ethereum, adding flexibility. All together, TRON’s horizontal (sidechain) and vertical (base chain) scaling means it can support massive stablecoin and DeFi activity. In fact, TRON has become a major stablecoin settlement layer (USDT on TRON exceeds $70B) due to this performance (How Tron’s upgrades are reshaping the digital economy: Report ).

Security Model and Audits: TRON’s security relies on its DPoS consensus and standard cryptography (Ed25519/ECDSA signatures, hash algorithms). With only 27 block producers, the network can quickly detect misbehavior (they can be voted out), but it also means fewer points of failure. TRON has a bug bounty program (via HackerOne) and invites external audits of smart contracts and the core code. To date, no catastrophic 51% attack or protocol-level hack has been reported on the TRON chain itself. However, there have been notable vulnerabilities in TRON’s tooling: for example, a flaw in the UpdateAccountPermission mechanism allowed hackers to silently hijack over 2,130 wallets in late 2024 ( Over 14,500 Tron addresses at risk of silent hijacking — TradingView News) (stealing ~$31.5M) by adding malicious keys without user notice ( Over 14,500 Tron addresses at risk of silent hijacking — TradingView News). TRON developers patched this quickly once discovered. Additionally, Tron’s co-founder publicly acknowledged a past “critical vulnerability which could have crashed its blockchain,” which the TRON Foundation fixed via a $1,500 bug bounty (Tron Co-Founder and CTO Leaves Project, Alleging Excessive Centralization). These incidents underscore that while the core chain has not failed, application-layer and permission features require constant security review. TRON’s Virtual Machine is designed for safety: it isolates contract execution, uses fixed gas-like costs (bandwidth/energy), and avoids ambiguous states (documentation/English_Documentation/TRON_Virtual_Machine/Virtual_Machine_Introduction.md at master · tronprotocol/documentation · GitHub). Unlike Ethereum (whose gas mechanism led to Denial-of-Service attacks), TRON’s bandwidth system mitigates such risks (documentation/English_Documentation/TRON_Virtual_Machine/Virtual_Machine_Introduction.md at master · tronprotocol/documentation · GitHub). In practice, TRON’s blockchain has proven reliable and robust: despite massive usage spikes (millions of daily transactions), it has maintained uptime and performance. No major consensus failures or chain splits have occurred. Nonetheless, the network’s smaller validator set means that collusion by a majority of SRs (27 out of 27) could theoretically censor transactions or alter protocol rules. This centralization is often cited as a security risk (see below). Third-party security audits of TRON’s codebase are not widely publicized, so formal audit quality is unclear. However, the platform’s track record suggests a stable system, albeit one that depends heavily on community monitoring and SR accountability.

‍

Thank you for taking the time to read this article. We invite you to explore more content on our blog for additional insights and information.

https://www.thestandard.io/blog  

‍

"If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at [ https://discord.gg/K72hed6FRE ]. We appreciate your feedback and look forward to hearing from you."

‍

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE

PART 1 / PAGE 3: www.thestandard.io/blog/tron-trx-a-scalable-blockchain-bet-on-emerging-market-adoption-and-stablecoin-dominance-in-2025-3