TRON closed its second quarter with a sharp rebound in stablecoin activity, ending the period holding $87.9 billion in circulating USDT—a level that, according to a Messari report, pushed TRON ahead of Ethereum in USDT circulation. The network also handled $2.1 trillion in USDT transfers across the quarter, underscoring how central stablecoin throughput remains to TRON’s growth story.

Messari’s “State of TRON Q2 2026” report attributes much of the expansion to stablecoin market concentration and renewed transfer momentum. It found that USDT made up 98.5% of TRON’s stablecoin market, while the overall stablecoin base grew 4.1% quarter-over-quarter to a record $89.2 billion. Average daily USDT transfer volume also returned to growth, rising 4.3% to $22.8 billion after it had declined in the first quarter.

Key takeaways

• USDT circulation on TRON hit $87.9 billion in Q2, with Messari noting TRON surpassed Ethereum on circulating USDT.
• USDT transfers increased meaningfully, with average daily transfer volume up 4.3% to $22.8 billion.
• Network usage hit new highs: 11.8 million average daily transactions (+8.7%) and 3.6 million active addresses (+11.7%).
• Fees reversed a two-quarter decline, rising 15.9% to $699.4 million as network fees climbed for the first time since an August 2025 governance change.
• DeFi activity weakened, with DeFi TVL down 1.9% to $4.4 billion and DEX volume falling for a fourth straight quarter.

Stablecoin momentum returns, and activity follows

The quarter’s headline numbers point to a clear relationship: higher stablecoin transfer flow translated into stronger on-chain usage. Messari reports that TRON averaged 11.8 million daily transactions during Q2, up 8.7% quarter-over-quarter. Daily active addresses also increased, climbing 11.7% to 3.6 million.

On peak days, usage reached even more visible milestones. The report says TRON processed a record 14.6 million transactions on June 15. For investors and traders tracking TRON’s health, this kind of throughput matters because it often correlates with broader stablecoin utility—especially when USDT dominates the stablecoin mix.

Messari’s breakdown reinforces that dominance. With USDT at 98.5% of TRON’s stablecoin market, the network’s stablecoin growth is effectively synonymous with USDT growth. That can create outsized upside when transfers accelerate, but it also concentrates risk if stablecoin demand shifts across chains.

Network fees improve after an earlier policy shift

Beyond volume, Q2 also marked a change in revenue dynamics. Messari notes that higher activity helped reverse a two-quarter decline in TRON network fees. Fees increased 15.9% to $699.4 million, their first quarterly increase since an August 2025 governance change reduced the price of TRON’s “energy unit,” a key metric that influences transaction costs.

From an economic perspective, this is an important nuance. Lower energy unit prices can reduce per-transaction costs, which may improve user experience but can also compress fee totals—at least until activity ramps enough to offset the unit price effect. Messari’s finding that the fee decline has now been reversed suggests Q2’s throughput was strong enough to compensate for the earlier pricing change.

DeFi fades while fundamentals for stablecoins strengthen

Not all parts of TRON’s ecosystem followed the same direction. Messari reports that DeFi TVL fell 1.9% to $4.4 billion. The report also shows that average daily DEX volume dropped 21.7% to $49.3 million, continuing a trend of contraction: it was the fourth consecutive quarterly decline.

For market participants, this divergence between stablecoin rails and DeFi activity is worth monitoring. Stablecoins can remain highly active even when trading and on-chain lending demand soften, particularly if users primarily use the chain for payments or settlement rather than DeFi strategies.

TRON’s token supply dynamics also remained a mixed signal. Despite the higher activity levels, the report states that TRX supply stayed inflationary. Circulating supply increased by 87 million tokens during the quarter, with issuance continuing to outpace burns. That means network usage growth in Q2 did not translate into immediate deflationary pressure on supply.

Institutional access expands across trading, tokenization, and staking

Alongside the on-chain activity metrics, Messari highlights a separate thread: growing institutional access to TRON products during Q2. Securitize reportedly launched Hamilton Lane’s tokenized Senior Credit Opportunities Fund on TRON, described as the network’s first TRON-issued asset. The fund began with about $4.3 million under management.

Grayscale also expanded the conversation around institutional custody and exposure by adding TRX to its list of assets under consideration. Separately, a proposed staked TRX exchange-traded product from Canary Capital remained in registration, according to the report.

Broader market access reflected similar momentum. Bitnomial launched spot TRX trading in the United States, OKX Europe introduced MiFID-regulated TRX expiry perpetuals, and Binance.US restored trading in the token during the quarter.

The push for institutional infrastructure did not stop after Q2. Earlier coverage noted that Anchorage Digital added native TRX staking and custody for TRC-20 assets in July, enabling institutional clients to stake TRX directly from its custody platform.

Taken together, these developments suggest TRON’s narrative is broadening beyond consumer usage and stablecoin transfers toward more regulated, institutional-friendly access paths. For investors, that can matter because improved access often reduces friction—both operational and regulatory—when firms decide how to allocate capital across crypto assets.

Looking ahead, readers should watch whether TRON’s stablecoin-driven strength can pull more DeFi liquidity back in, given that DEX volumes and DeFi TVL fell for multiple quarters. At the same time, the sustainability of higher fees after the earlier energy unit change will likely be tested by the next round of network usage—especially on peak days like the June 15 transaction record.

Crypto industry leaders are voicing frustration after the U.S. Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act before its August recess, leaving the market structure bill facing a crucial procedural vote weeks before the 2026 midterm elections.

CLARITY Act faces a Sept. 15 procedural vote

Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed cloture on the motion to proceed to the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act shortly before the Senate began its month-long recess, according to the Senate Daily Press.

The filing positions the legislation for an initial procedural test after senators return to Washington on Sept. 14. The cloture motion is scheduled to ripen on Sept. 15, according to previous crypto.news coverage.

The vote would determine whether the Senate begins formally considering the bill. It would not amount to final passage.

CLARITY would still need to move through debate and possible amendments before receiving a separate approval vote. Any Senate-approved version that differs from the measure passed by the House would also need to return to the lower chamber before reaching President Donald Trump’s desk.

The legislation needs at least 60 votes to clear the Senate’s cloture threshold. Republicans cannot reach that number without Democratic support, making the remaining bipartisan negotiations central to its prospects.

The House approved the CLARITY Act by a 294–134 vote on July 17, 2025, with 78 Democrats supporting the legislation. The Senate Banking Committee advanced its portion of the legislation by a 15–9 vote in May 2026, with Democratic Sens. Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks joining Republicans.

Crypto leaders criticize the Senate delay

Industry executives and advocates reacted negatively after lawmakers left Washington without holding a procedural vote.

“You can imagine how frustrated I am,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis said after the chamber failed to schedule the legislation for consideration before the recess.

Lummis added that she would continue working with other senators and described the effort as “far from over.” She had previously pushed for a CLARITY Act vote before the August recess, saying negotiators had spent months working through the bill’s CFTC provisions and other disputes.

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Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong also called the delay disappointing but argued that broader crypto adoption would continue regardless of Congress’ schedule.

Armstrong pointed to stablecoin adoption, tokenization, and expanding digital asset markets as sources of continued momentum. Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad similarly said September would offer lawmakers another opportunity to “finish the job.”

As crypto.news previously reported, the delay has not produced an immediate decline in Coinbase shares. COIN closed Friday at $153.60, gaining about 5.7% during the session.

BitMine Chair Tom Lee offered a similar market assessment in the company’s weekly report. Lee said investors appeared more focused on softer inflation and employment data than on the immediate consequences of CLARITY failing to advance before the recess.

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Ethics and stablecoin rewards divide senators

The September timetable gives lawmakers more time to negotiate but also pushes the vote closer to the Nov. 3 midterm elections. The Senate will have roughly seven weeks between its return and Election Day, narrowing the available floor time for a complex bill.

Democratic demands for stronger ethics restrictions remain one of the main obstacles. Several lawmakers want the bill to address crypto investments and business interests held by senior federal officials and their families.

Those concerns have centered on Trump’s association with World Liberty Financial and the Official Trump memecoin launched shortly before he returned to office. Sen. Elizabeth Warren supports creating a federal crypto framework but has rejected the current CLARITY Act over corruption, consumer protection, national security, and financial stability concerns.

Banking groups are pressing senators from another direction. They argue that the legislation could still allow crypto companies to provide stablecoin rewards under certain conditions, potentially drawing deposits away from community banks.

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The current framework distinguishes between interest paid simply for holding a stablecoin and rewards connected to activities such as trading, payments, or loyalty programs. That distinction has placed companies such as Coinbase at the center of the dispute.

Banking associations have urged the Senate to close what they describe as stablecoin-yield loopholes. Crypto advocates counter that the legislation already prevents stablecoin issuers from paying deposit-like interest and that broader restrictions would protect banks from competition.

Prediction markets remain split on passage

Prediction markets show traders expect the Senate to vote on CLARITY in September, but they remain doubtful that the legislation will become law before the end of 2026.

A Kalshi contract with approximately $1.23 million in trading volume placed the probability of a Senate vote before Oct. 1 at 88%. That closely aligns with the Sept. 15 procedural schedule created by Thune’s filing.

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However, a separate Polymarket contract assigned only a 25% probability that CLARITY would be signed into law during 2026. More than $5.79 million had been traded on that market.

The difference reflects the additional steps required after the first Senate vote. Lawmakers must clear the 60-vote threshold, settle disagreements over ethics and stablecoin rewards, approve a final Senate text, and reconcile it with the House version.

Longer-term contracts have increasingly shifted expectations into 2027. Kalshi traders recently placed the probability of the legislation taking effect before July 1, 2027, at 41%, while assigning higher odds to passage under later deadlines, according to crypto.news reporting.

The Sept. 15 vote will provide the next concrete test. Clearing cloture would allow senators to begin considering the bill, but its final passage would still depend on whether negotiators can convert procedural support into a durable bipartisan agreement.

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Trump Media and Technology Group’s (DJT) bitcoin holdings shrank during the second quarter of the year as falling crypto prices saddled the Truth Social parent with $360.6 million in losses in the first half of the year.

The company held 9,477.16 bitcoin BTC$64,001.76 with a fair value of $557.1 million as of June 30, according to its quarterly filing Monday. That’s down from 9,542.16 BTC at the end of March, translating to a 65 BTC decline in holdings through the quarter.

Trump Media’s Crypto.com-linked cronos CRO$0.04726 holdings remained unchanged at roughly 756.1 million tokens, but their fair value fell to $40.6 million from $68 million at the end of 2025.

A significant chunk of the company’s bitcoin was also tied up as collateral. Trump Media, which is majority owned by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, had 4,260.73 BTC pledged against convertible notes and another 2,077.34 BTC pledged for its bitcoin options strategy as of June 30.

U.S. President Donald Trump owns a significant stake in the trust, which is controlled by Donald Trump, Jr., one of the president’s children.

The results landed only days after Trump Media pared back parts of its crypto ambitions.

Ethereum’s updated roadmap adds native rollups, stronger privacy, and post-quantum scaling as advances in cryptography and AI reshape the network’s long-term technical priorities, according to co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin compared the network’s 2023 roadmap with its current Strawmap in an Aug. 10 X post, identifying several technologies that have gained, lost, or changed priority over the past three years.

Buterin said the two plans retain substantial overlap, but the order and implementation of several goals have changed. Quantum security has moved closer to the front of the roadmap, while verifiable delay functions and some proposed Ethereum Virtual Machine improvements have received less attention.

Older technical designs have also been replaced as Ethereum researchers identified alternatives. Plans involving Verkle trees shifted toward a unified binary tree and later a PBT design, while state expiry evolved into a broader proposal for new state types.

The biggest difference, according to Buterin, comes from the areas that did not appear in the 2023 roadmap. These include native privacy, post-quantum scaling, simpler specifications for formal verification, markets for future blob and gas capacity, native rollups, and a wider range of possible replacements or modifications for the EVM.

Ethereum privacy and quantum security move forward

Native privacy is one of the clearest additions to Ethereum’s long-term direction. Buterin listed keyed nonces, recent roots, parts of FOCIL, lean privacy pools, and wormholes among the mechanisms now being explored.

Keyed nonces could make it harder for observers to connect a user’s transactions, while recent-root mechanisms may allow private applications to verify recent blockchain states without revealing a complete history. FOCIL, meanwhile, is intended to make transaction inclusion more resistant to censorship by block builders.

The changes build on Buterin’s three-step Ethereum privacy plan released in May. That proposal combined account abstraction with FOCIL, keyed nonces, and changes at the wallet and access layers to reduce metadata leaks.

Post-quantum scaling has also become a separate priority. Ethereum currently depends on cryptographic systems that could eventually become vulnerable if sufficiently powerful quantum computers emerge. Replacing them without sharply increasing signature sizes, verification costs, or network bandwidth presents an additional scaling problem.

The current roadmap considers LeanSPHINCS signatures, signature aggregation, and “zkzk frames” as potential parts of the solution. Crypto.news previously reported that an Ethereum researcher demonstrated account-level post-quantum protection at an estimated cost of $0.07 per account, showing that wallet-level preparation may begin before a full protocol upgrade.

Ethereum’s Strawmap is not a finalized schedule. It is a coordination document covering proposed upgrades through 2029, with individual changes still requiring research, testing, and agreement among developers before they can reach the network.

Native rollups enter Ethereum’s design space

Native rollups were not included in the 2023 roadmap because zero-knowledge proof systems were not mature enough for developers to seriously consider integrating them into Ethereum’s base protocol, Buterin said.

Rollups currently operate as separate layer-2 systems. They process transactions outside Ethereum’s main execution layer and submit proofs or transaction data to the base network. Each rollup generally maintains its own contracts, proof system, upgrade controls, and security assumptions.

A native rollup would move part of that verification process into Ethereum itself. The base protocol could provide a standardized mechanism for checking state transitions, potentially reducing the amount of custom infrastructure each rollup must maintain.

Such a change could simplify the relationship between Ethereum and its layer-2 networks, though the exact design remains unsettled. Developers would still need to decide what functions should become native, how different virtual machines would be supported, and whether protocol-level verification could avoid creating new complexity.

The proposal arrives as Ethereum’s broader scaling approach changes. Buterin said the network is moving away from trying to scale every type of activity through one general mechanism. Instead, developers may build highly scalable but more restricted systems for common use cases such as token transfers, decentralized exchange trades, and privacy protocols.

This approach could allow Ethereum to process specific high-volume activities more efficiently without requiring every node or application to support the same expanded execution environment.

Blob and gas futures are another addition that did not exist as a developed roadmap concept in 2023. Such markets could allow users or layer-2 networks to lock in future access to Ethereum’s data or execution capacity, reducing uncertainty over costs during periods of heavy demand.

AI could make Ethereum easier to verify

Ethereum’s updated roadmap also places more weight on simplifying the protocol specification so developers can formally verify its behavior.

Formal verification uses mathematical proofs to determine whether software follows its intended rules. Applying it to an entire blockchain protocol has historically required substantial time and specialist work, particularly when the protocol includes multiple clients, cryptographic systems, and interacting layers.

Buterin argued that advances in artificial intelligence are making large-scale verification more practical. He previously said AI-assisted formal verification could become the “final form” of software development, allowing developers to combine optimized code with machine-checkable evidence that it works correctly.

That work is closely tied to Ethereum’s use of STARK proofs. Recursive STARKs allow one proof to verify another, producing compact evidence for increasingly large batches of computation.

Buterin said the same underlying verification method could eventually operate across Ethereum’s execution, consensus, and data layers. However, using a common proof system throughout the protocol would make the security of its implementation especially important, increasing the need for formal verification and independent testing.

Ethereum’s virtual machine may also change as these systems develop. Buterin said zkzk frames could require the protocol to expose an instruction set other than the EVM, with leanISA and RISC-V among the possible candidates.

Under one potential model, the EVM could continue serving developers and existing applications while operating as an intermediate representation above a simpler underlying instruction set. Buterin cautioned that this part of the design remains too early even for inclusion in the current Strawmap.

Roadmap remains a long-term coordination plan

Buterin’s comparison provides additional detail on Ethereum’s proposed Lean rebuild, which seeks to make the protocol quantum-safe, private, censorship-resistant, and easier to verify over the coming years.

The direction could eventually affect U.S. wallet providers, exchanges, institutional stakers, and layer-2 operators that rely on Ethereum. However, the post announced no immediate software release, hard fork, or mandatory action for users.

Each major proposal must still move through Ethereum’s research and governance process. Native rollups, alternative instruction sets, and post-quantum signatures remain technical directions rather than confirmed features with fixed activation dates.

Ethereum (ETH) showed no clear positive reaction to the roadmap update. ETH traded near $1,875 at the time of writing, down about 2.6% over the previous 24 hours as the broader crypto market weakened.

The latest comparison nevertheless shows how Ethereum’s development priorities have widened since 2023. Scaling remains central, but privacy, quantum resistance, and verifiable protocol design now carry more weight in determining how the network could operate through the end of the decade.