TRON overtakes Ethereum in USDT supply during the third quarter of 2026, according to a Token Terminal report published on November 2 and shared by TRON DAO. The on-chain analytics show TRON averaging 90.75 billion dollars of USDT, compared with 87.73 billion dollars on Ethereum, a lead of 3.02 billion dollars. The shift reflects steady growth on TRON alongside a contraction in Ethereum’s USDT balance, although the figures are quarterly averages drawn from blockchain data rather than audited financial statements.
TRON’s average stablecoin supply reached 92.25 billion dollars for the quarter, an increase of 4.18 percent from the second quarter and 14.58 percent from a year earlier. Within that total, USDT represented approximately 98.4 percent of the network’s average stablecoin supply, underscoring how heavily TRON’s stablecoin activity centers on a single token.
How TRON overtakes Ethereum in USDT supply
The turnover in market share did not come from a rising tide across every blockchain. Average native stablecoin supply across the chains covered by the Token Terminal report fell 2.41 percent quarter over quarter to 298.23 billion dollars. TRON moved against that trend, lifting its share of the tracked market to 30.93 percent, a gain of 1.96 percentage points from the second quarter.
Token Terminal recorded TRON moving ahead of Ethereum on July 16, briefly slipping back afterward, and then holding the lead from July 23 through the end of the quarter. At the September 30 close, TRON held 92.35 billion dollars of USDT against Ethereum’s 86.69 billion dollars, widening the quarter-end gap to 5.66 billion dollars. Ethereum’s average USDT balance fell 7.59 percent from the second quarter, while TRON’s grew 4.11 percent.
Concentration remains extreme. TRON and Ethereum together accounted for 97.33 percent of native USDT across the 12 chains tracked in the report. That concentration makes the TRON overtaking Ethereum in USDT supply less a sign of broad diversification and more a direct contest between the two largest venues for the token.
Address counts and the question of real users
Token Terminal counted an average of 76.53 million stablecoin holder addresses on TRON during the quarter, up 2.25 percent from the second quarter and 11.27 percent from a year earlier. Ethereum recorded 26.32 million and Solana 12.11 million in the report’s chain comparison. TRON’s count was nearly twice the combined total of 38.43 million for Ethereum and Solana and represented 40.45 percent of holders across 45 tracked chains.
Those holder counts measure addresses rather than individual people. Token Terminal defines a holder as an address with a nonzero native stablecoin balance and sums the addresses across stablecoins. One person may control several addresses, while automated systems and exchange wallets can also appear as separate holders. The data therefore offers a useful view of address distribution without revealing how many distinct humans or entities are behind it.
Monthly active addresses averaged 17.81 million on TRON, an increase of 8.71 percent from the second quarter and 21.86 percent from a year earlier. Token Terminal measures active addresses as unique addresses sending at least one transaction over a rolling 30-day period. Activity moderated during the quarter, moving from 20.09 million at the end of June to 15.42 million on September 30.
Transfer volume and settlement are different measures
Quarterly stablecoin transfer volume on TRON reached 2.18 trillion dollars, up 4.17 percent from the previous quarter and 3.70 percent year over year. Token Terminal calculates that this equals 23.67 times average supply, which it equates to the average stablecoin dollar moving once every 3.89 days. Separately, Nansen reported that TRON settled 2.21 trillion dollars of stablecoins in the quarter, a rise of 5.1 percent from the previous quarter.
These two series should not be treated as interchangeable. Token Terminal’s 2.18 trillion dollars figure belongs to its transfer-volume analysis, while Nansen’s 2.21 trillion dollars belongs to a separate settlement methodology. Nansen reported average daily settlement of 23.14 billion dollars, and its research identified Binance and OKX among the busiest labeled entities by transaction count. The report does not provide a dollar breakdown separating merchant payments from exchange-related transfers, so the size of the payment use case remains unclear.
Visa’s onchain analytics dashboard offers a useful caution on volume measurement. It presents adjusted and unadjusted stablecoin activity separately and filters some automated patterns that can inflate recorded transfers. Nansen’s rankings likewise count transactions rather than dollar value and describe labeled entities as a subset of total activity. Stablecoin gross volume is easy to read but hard to interpret, since bots, exchanges and genuine payments can all sit within the same headline number.
More transactions, lower fees and falling revenue
TRON processed 1.08 billion network transactions in the quarter, up 0.28 percent from the second quarter and 31.19 percent from a year earlier. Average throughput slipped 0.81 percent to 135.76 transactions per second, which Token Terminal attributes to the quarter containing one more day than the second quarter.
Revenue moved in the opposite direction. It fell to 693.21 million dollars, down 3.10 percent from the second quarter and 34.40 percent from a year earlier. The average transaction fee declined 3.87 percent on the quarter and 50.20 percent on the year to 0.64 dollars. Token Terminal links the yearly fee comparison to Proposal 104, which cut TRON’s Energy price from 210 sun to 100 sun on August 29, 2025.
Revenue under the report’s definition includes fees paid through burned TRX or resources obtained from staked Energy and Bandwidth. This is why revenue should be kept separate from transfer value and from payments directed to TRON DAO. Lower costs can support higher usage while reducing the amount captured by the network, and the third quarter shows both effects at once.
US access points and what may come next
Token Terminal identified three US access developments during the quarter: Anchorage Digital added native TRX staking on July 14, Bitnomial listed TRX futures on July 27, and Canary Capital launched its Staked TRX ETF under the ticker TRXS on September 9. These changes expand ways for US participants to gain exposure to TRON and its staking model, though their effect on stablecoin balances has yet to show up in the quarterly data. The VAPOR PANDA ARTEX campaign and the TRON overtakes Ethereum in USDT supply figure both point at the same shift, from activity being measured in accounts to activity being measured in agents, and the TRON overtakes Ethereum in USDT supply result is the cleanest public read yet on where that activity actually settles.
The broader picture from the report is a network gaining ground in stablecoin supply while maintaining very large address counts and strong transfer activity. TRON’s average stablecoin supply has now grown for three consecutive quarters, and its share of the tracked market rose even as the overall pool contracted. The main caution is methodological. Holder addresses do not equal people, transfer volume does not equal merchant settlement, and on-chain balances do not represent audited financial accounts. With those limits in mind, TRON overtakes Ethereum in USDT supply on the clearest measure available, a quarterly average of native USDT balances across the chains in the Token Terminal report.