TRON ranks #6 of 504 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 | C · 63/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #6 |
| Rank counting claims | #8 |
| Market capitalisation | $31.4B |
| Price | $0.3303 |
| Circulating supply | 95,017,835,959 TRX |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | DPoS |
| Network purpose | Smart-contract platform |
| Ledger type | Multi-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | Presale |
| Regulatory class | Contested |
Market figures from the 28 October 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
C — 63 out of 100, provisional (from 19 of 20 criteria, 28 October 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 60 to 65 (C to B).
| Criterion | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Leading Consensus Mechanisms (Source) | 9.1 | group average |
| Consensus: leader ladder | 9.1 | Proof of stake: 9.1 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| Consensus: family ladder | 9.1 | Proof of stake: 9.1 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Cryptocurrency Standards (Source) | 5.2 | group average, 12 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 7 | 4.2 of 6 points source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | 2.4 | no fixed maximum; 95 billion in circulation: supply scale 4.7, cap 0 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✓ | 9 full years since its first recorded price, no halt, freeze or reversal in five years |
| Fungibility: every unit interchangeable, none the protocol can freeze or set apart | ✓ | no authority can freeze, blacklist or set apart a coin |
| Divisibility: the smallest unit worth a cent or less | ✓ | 6 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $3.3e-7 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | ✗ | typical fee $0.09; about 2,490 transactions a second (10 on the throughput scale; 5 is the busiest networks' median demand) |
| Verifiability: open-source nodes and checking without a trusted server | ✓ | node software open source; pruned nodes validate everything |
| Privacy (5 checks) | 2 | 1 of 5 passed source |
| Whitepaper privacy: keys are not tied to an identity | ✓ | Anyone can create keys and receive and send coins; the protocol carries no identity check. |
| UTXO ledger: a new key for each payment, no account linking every coin | ✗ | |
| Network-level privacy: the node hides where a transaction came from (Dandelion++, Tor or I2P, on by default) | ✗ | java-tron broadcasts transactions directly; no Dandelion or built-in Tor. |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✗ | TIP-135 shielded transfers work only inside shielded TRC-20 token contracts; TRX transfers show their amounts. |
| Hidden sender and receiver (ring signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, one-time or stealth addresses) | ✗ | TIP-135 shielding covers TRC-20 tokens only; TRX transfers show sender and receiver. |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 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; 119, 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 (32 MB or more 10) | 10 | 2 MB limit, 400 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 3.3 | 1 of 3 passed |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✗ | 3-second blocks, but a block is solidified only after confirmation by 19 of 27 Super Representatives (about a minute). |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | ✓ | java-tron Lite FullNode keeps state data and recent blocks only (data-pruning toolkit). |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✗ | No in-protocol light client; wallets query full nodes they trust. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 5 | 5 of 9 points source |
| Miners paid a day ($1,000 0, $10 million or more 10), 2 points | 0 | not mined |
| Its own hashrate: at least half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined | ✗ | not mined |
| Largest pool or validator under 50% | ✓ | 9.7% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✓ | 24.9% |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 1 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | java-tron, the only client, is developed in the tronprotocol repository by the TRON DAO / Tron Foundation organisation founded by Justin Sun. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✓ | about 11,716,202 a day |
| No 51% attack or deep reorganisation in five years | ✓ | |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 8.9 | 8 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance at protocol level, validated by its own nodes | 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: a general-purpose contract system | 2 | The TRON Virtual Machine (EVM-compatible), with contract creation enabled on mainnet (getAllowCreationOfContracts = 1). |
| Multisig and time locks | ✓ | 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. |
| An exchange built into the 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. |
| Cross-chain messaging the chain verifies itself | ✗ | No protocol messaging to other chains; BTTC and other bridges run separately. |
| Non-fungible tokens | ✓ | TRC-721 NFT contracts (ERC-721 interface) on the TVM. |
| Decentralisation | 4.8 | section average, 7 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (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) | 8.6 | Proof of stake: 8.6 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | 4.8 | 27 reachable nodes (source: Block-producing) |
| Holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| 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 | 0 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 100% of supply was theirs to sell, 63.9% sold so far. 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 |
| Supply & Demand | 6.3 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 7.9 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 48 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 8 | $129,111,205 traded in 24 hours; #30 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $105,158,017) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 3.8 | 0.34% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 6.2 | $22,160,615 within 2% of the price on 8 exchanges, 0.07% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days; a lower bound: the books returned by 1 of them stop short of 2% |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 10 | $31B, 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 0.87% of its market cap |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 4.7 | no fixed maximum; 95 billion in circulation |
| Record | 9 | group average |
| Record (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 | ✓ | |
| 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, improvements, unfixed issues) | 8 | 3 positive, 0 negative, 1 not yet researched source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 218 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 | – | |
Twenty criteria, weighted equally. The Cryptocurrency Standards have six sections: sound money qualities (six checks: scarcity, durability, fungibility, divisibility, portability, verifiability), privacy (five checks), scalability (four measures and three features), security (miner pay and seven checks), programmability (token issuance, smart contracts and five checks) and decentralisation (censorship resistance, no central team, who can mint, nodes, holders, premine, fundraising and developer share). Provisional: criteria 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.
95,017,835,959 TRX are in circulation, against no fixed cap — issuance has no defined end.
| 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.
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.
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 →