TRON (TRX)
TRON ranks #6 of 484 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #8: 2 of the 7 assets ahead of it are not native coins but tokens or claims. A token is issued on a host blockchain rather than running its own; a claim stands for an asset already counted. Of the 2 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, all are claims on other assets.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A · 69/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #6 |
| Rank counting claims | #8 |
| Market capitalisation | $30.2B |
| Price | $0.3176 |
| Circulating supply | 95,034,125,063 TRX |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | DPoS |
| Active addresses a day | 4,203,470 October 2026 median, Coin Metrics |
| Network purpose | Smart-contract platform |
| Ledger type | Multi-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | Presale |
| Regulatory class | Contested |
Market figures from the 10 November 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
CoinSpectrum Grade (Source)
A — 69 out of 100, provisional (from 10 of 10 sections, 10 November 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 66 to 71 (A to A).
| Section and criteria | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Consensus | 9.1 | average of 2 criteria |
| By leader (its largest chain's market cap) (Source) | 9.1 | Proof of stake: 9.1 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| By family (all its chains' market cap) (Source) | 9.1 | Proof of stake: 9.1 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Supply | 5.1 | the supply scale times 0.9, and a point for a fixed cap that holds |
| Supply (21 million scores 10) | 5.7 | no fixed maximum; 95 billion in circulation |
| Distribution | 5.9 | average of 4 parts |
| Holder concentration (Source) | – | Not yet measured |
| Active addresses | 10 | 4,203,470 addresses active a day, the median of October 2026's 31 days (Coin Metrics community data) source |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 0 | 100% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. The whole supply was issued by the founders: 100B TRX as an ERC-20 in 2017, cut to 99B at the June 2018 mainnet by a 1B burn. That is more than the current total supply of about 95.01B TRX (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23), so the figure is capped at 100. source |
| Fundraising (share sold) (Source) | 3.6 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 63.9% of supply sold. 2017 public ICO of 40B TRX plus private placement, which TRON's economics page puts at 25.7B (25.7%) and other accounts at 15.75B with the 10B Peiwo Huanle (Justin Sun company) share kept separate. Sold 55.75B-65.7B / 95.011B TRX (CoinGecko total, 2026-10-24) = 58.7-69.2%, midpoint 63.9%. Initial distribution per TRON's developer docs: private sale and early investors 25.7% (25.7B TRX), public sale about 40% (40B TRX, the 2017 ICO), TRON Foundation/DAO 34.3%. The total dollar amount raised was not verified here. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. No cut. New TRX is minted per block as a block-production reward to the producing Super Representative plus a vote reward shared among Super Representatives and partners by votes (rates lowered by committee proposals over time); none goes to the TRON Foundation or a treasury. source |
| Decentralisation | 4.7 | average of 4 parts |
| Governance (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol-level freeze of TRX; USDT freezes on TRON are performed by Tether in its own token contract. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: java-tron, the only client, is developed in the tronprotocol repository by the TRON DAO / Tron Foundation organisation founded by Justin Sun. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 4 | Gated by election: a delegated set voted in by holders produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | 4.8 | 27 reachable nodes (source: Block-producing) |
| Security | 8.5 | 6.8 of 8 points source |
| Pool diversity (Largest pool 50% 0 to 20% 10, largest three 90% 0 to 50% 10; 2 points) | 10 | largest 9.7%, largest three 24.9% |
| Network activity (Transactions a day, 250 0, 500,000 or more 10; 2 points) | 10 | about 11,716,202 transactions a day |
| Hashrate (Own work 5, its power 1 kW 0 to 10 GW 5; 1 point) | 1 | not mined: another consensus, 1 |
| Clients (Separate code and teams 10, separate code or teams 9, a fork by the same team or a stale second 8; one client: a new version within 12 months 7, 24 months 6, none in 24 months 5, none in 48 months 3; a second in development +0.5, a second seen running +1, 8 at most with one client; chain ended 0; 1 point) | 7 | one client, latest version Oct 2026 |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Scalability | 5.7 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 3.5 | typical fee $0.09 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 121, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 10 | about 2,490 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 1.7 | a block every 3 seconds |
| Block space per 10 minutes (24 MB or more 10: the ten busiest networks' median demand, 16.4 MB, and half again for growth) | 10 | 2 MB limit, 400 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 3.3 | 1 of 3 passed |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper abstract, §1, §2 and §11) | ✗ | 3-second blocks, but a block is solidified only after confirmation by 19 of 27 Super Representatives (about a minute). |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | ✓ | java-tron Lite FullNode keeps state data and recent blocks only (data-pruning toolkit). |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✗ | No in-protocol light client; wallets query full nodes they trust. |
| Privacy | 3.5 | 3.5 of 10: whitepaper privacy 3.5 of 7, extra features 0 of 3, 1 not yet researched source |
| Protocol level privacy (Keys not tied to an identity · Whitepaper §10) | 10 | Anyone can create keys and receive and send coins; the protocol carries no identity check. |
| UTXO ledger (Separate outputs, change to a new address · Whitepaper §2, §9) | 0 | An account ledger: one running balance for each address, so the remainder stays at the sending address and its payments share one public history. |
| HD addresses (A new address for each payment, unlinked · Whitepaper §10) | – | |
| Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential) | 0 | TIP-135 shielded transfers work only inside shielded TRC-20 token contracts; TRX transfers show their amounts. |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | 0 | TIP-135 shielding covers TRC-20 tokens only; TRX transfers show sender and receiver. |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | 0 | java-tron broadcasts transactions directly; no Dandelion or built-in Tor. |
| Programmability | 8.9 | 8 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance (At protocol level) | 2 | Native TRC-10 tokens in the protocol (for a fee) and TRC-20 contracts on the TRON Virtual Machine, both open to any account. |
| Smart contracts (General-purpose) | 2 | The TRON Virtual Machine (EVM-compatible), with contract creation enabled on mainnet (getAllowCreationOfContracts = 1). |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | Native account-permission multisig (weighted keys against a threshold, AllowMultiSign = 1) and timelock contracts on the TVM. |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✓ | HTLC contracts on the TVM; Garden lists TRON among its atomic-swap contract chains. |
| Native DEX (Trades the coin itself, not a claim) | ✓ | Traded as itself, not as a wrapped token or a claim: an exchange in its own protocol (Protocol exchange transactions (ExchangeCreate/Inject/Withdraw/Transaction), Bancor-style TRX/TRC-10 pairs live since October 2018; the order-book Market transactions are not enabled); THORChain; its own chain's DEXes (Tron, DefiLlama). |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✗ | No protocol messaging to other chains; BTTC and other bridges run separately. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✓ | TRC-721 NFT contracts (ERC-721 interface) on the TVM. |
| Demand | 8.1 | average of 7 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 50 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 8.1 | $88,670,907 traded in 24 hours; #23 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $108,973,845) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 3.9 | 0.35% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (±2% of the price ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 5.3 | $12,050,737 within 2% of the price on 8 exchanges, 0.04% of its market cap, median of the last 15 days; a lower bound: the books returned by 1 of them stop short of 2% |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 10 | $30B, at the top of the scale |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 9.1 | futures, options and margin positions 0.90% of its market cap |
| Wallet support (wallets that hold it, 10 or more: 10) | 10 | 16 wallets in the site's wallet directory |
| Record | 9 | average of 3 criteria |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 9 | 9 full years since 2017-09-13, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, fixes, vulnerabilities) | 8 | 3 positive, 0 negative, 1 not yet researched source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 290 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/tronprotocol/java-tron); java-tron GreatVoyage-v4.8.2.4, 22 Oct 2026; 10 releases in the last 24 months. |
| Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years, +1 | ✓ | Proposal 104, Aug 2025: energy unit price cut from 210 to 100 sun, roughly halving fees for contract calls. |
| Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1 | ✓ | GreatVoyage 4.8.0 (Kant), 2025: TVM Cancun opcodes including EIP-1153 transient storage (TIP-650). |
| Not yet researched | ||
| Shipped a security fix in two years | – | |
| Conduct (origin, claims, halts) | 10 | 3 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive record | ||
| Launched with a stated purpose, not as a joke | ✓ | |
| No claims by its founders that contradict its own design | ✓ | |
| No halt, freeze or reversal in five years | ✓ | |
Ten sections, weighted equally, each 0 to 10: consensus (the two ladders), supply (the supply scale and a fixed cap that holds), distribution (premine, fundraising, developer share, holders), decentralisation (governance, no central team, who can mint, nodes), security, scalability, privacy, programmability (what the scripting layer can do beyond the whitepaper's payment system), demand, and record (age, development, conduct). They are built from the criteria in the second table: privacy, scalability, security and decentralisation are the Cryptocurrency Standards among them, as follows: privacy (the whitepaper's three checks a base of 7 of 10, three extra features up to 3 more), scalability (four measures and three features), security (pool diversity, network activity, hashrate, clients and two checks) and decentralisation (governance, no central team, who can mint, nodes, holders, premine, fundraising and developer share); programmability (token issuance, smart contracts and five checks) follows them, and supply and demand are two: the supply, scored against 21 million, and demand, the average of seven measures of the market and the wallets. Provisional: parts marked — are not yet measured and are left out of the average. A rating of structure and market depth, not a price forecast or investment advice. How the grade is built · Highest-graded cryptocurrencies.
Proof of Stake coins
Ethereum ETHA+
BNB BNBA
Solana SOLA+
Hyperliquid HYPEB
Cardano ADAA
NEAR Protocol NEARA
Avalanche AVAXAAll Proof of Stake chains →Proof of Work coins
Bitcoin BTCA+
Zcash ZECA+
Dogecoin DOGEA+
Monero XMRA+
Bitcoin Cash BCHA++
Litecoin LTCA+
Ethereum Classic ETCAAll Proof of Work chains →Supply
95,034,125,063 TRX are in circulation, against no fixed cap — issuance has no defined end.
Launch and allocation
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 100% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 63.9% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Nodes or validators | 27 |
| Fundraising | Public sale |
The whole supply was issued by the founders: 100B TRX as an ERC-20 in 2017, cut to 99B at the June 2018 mainnet by a 1B burn. That is more than the current total supply of about 95.01B TRX (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23), so the figure is capped at 100.
Initial distribution per TRON's developer docs: private sale and early investors 25.7% (25.7B TRX), public sale about 40% (40B TRX, the 2017 ICO), TRON Foundation/DAO 34.3%. The total dollar amount raised was not verified here.
2017 public ICO of 40B TRX plus private placement, which TRON's economics page puts at 25.7B (25.7%) and other accounts at 15.75B with the 10B Peiwo Huanle (Justin Sun company) share kept separate. Sold 55.75B-65.7B / 95.011B TRX (CoinGecko total, 2026-10-24) = 58.7-69.2%, midpoint 63.9%.
No cut. New TRX is minted per block as a block-production reward to the producing Super Representative plus a vote reward shared among Super Representatives and partners by votes (rates lowered by committee proposals over time); none goes to the TRON Foundation or a treasury.
Sources: tron.network · journalducoin.com · coingecko.com · developers.tron.network · tronscan.org · developers.tron.network. Researched 2026-10-24, medium confidence.
What a regulator has said
Alleged an unregistered security by the SEC (2023 complaint); not named a commodity in 2026 and not adjudicated — status unsettled.
The regulator's position, reported as stated, not CoinSpectrum's. Assets nobody has ruled on are left unclassified rather than sorted by a guess.
How CoinSpectrum ranks TRON
TRON is #6 among cryptocurrencies and #8 in the market ranking, which lists wrapped coins, staked derivatives, stablecoins and tokens alongside them. CoinSpectrum counts an asset once, and counts only cryptocurrencies: assets with their own blockchain and their own consensus. A wrapped coin, a staked derivative or a stablecoin is a claim on something already counted; a token, memecoin or otherwise, runs on another chain's blocks. All of them are listed, each in its own section, and none is added to the total. The 2 places between TRON's two ranks are held by claims and tokens, not by other networks. The methodology sets out the rule and the counting rule argues for it.
The price above is the median of the exchanges the site reads live, checked every minute and cross-checked against a market snapshot (how market data is gathered). The grade is scored on published criteria, each with its source (the method). The site is independent, nothing on it is a paid placement, and its statements are signed (about CoinSpectrum, the manifesto).
See the 4 wrapped and staked claims on TRON →