TRON (TRX) Burn

Every TRON transaction consumes bandwidth (1,000 sun per byte) and, when it calls a contract such as a USDT transfer, energy (100 sun per unit since 29 Aug 2025). Anyone who has not staked TRX for resources pays in TRX, and that TRX is burned — it does not go to validators. In the other direction, every 3-second block mints block and vote rewards; the Tronscan counter this ledger uses shows exactly 3,685,376 TRX a day since 14 Jun 2025 (4,606,720 before). Lifetime: genesis 100B, burned 17.85B (16.85B fees + the 1B Independence Day burn of 25 Jun 2018), minted 12.78B — total supply 94.93B, 5.1% below genesis.

The last thirty days: burn averaged 2.59M TRX a day ($0.86M), mint 3.69M — supply grows by a net 1.1M TRX a day, 0.42% a year. Small, but the opposite direction from the three years before, and the "24-hour supply balance" card above will flip the day burn exceeds mint again.

The Tronscan series shows three fully deflationary years — not a single exception. 2022: burned 2.74B, minted 1.68B, net −1.06B. 2023 was the peak: burned 5.49B ($424M), net −3.81B, supply shrinking almost 4% in a year — on the back of USDT on TRON booming at an energy price of 420 sun. 2024: burned 3.98B ($577M), net −2.29B. The record day was 21 Aug 2024: 34.68M TRX ($5.3M) burned in 24 hours during the SunPump memecoin frenzy, ten times an ordinary day today.

In dollars, 2025 was actually the biggest year: $582M of fees burned even though the TRX count was only 2.12B — because TRX traded at twice its 2023 price. Two ways of counting, two stories: by token, the peak passed in 2023; by money, the network kept burning at record levels until fees were cut at the end of August 2025.

On 13 Jun 2025, Proposal No. 102 passed with 25 of 27 Super Representatives: the block reward fell from 16 to 8 TRX and the vote reward from 160 to 128 TRX per block, explicitly to speed up deflation. The Tronscan counter moved from 4,606,720 to 3,685,376 TRX a day the next day, −20%. The mint side shrank — but the burn side then shrank faster.

On 29 Aug 2025, Proposal No. 104 cut the energy price from 210 to 100 sun (−52%) to make USDT transfers cheaper — a transfer to an empty wallet went from 27.25 TRX to 13.4 TRX. Daily burn dropped from 6–7M to 4M within the first week, then kept sliding: August 2025 burned 178M, September 110.6M — for the first time exactly equal to the mint (110.6M). August 2026: 79.5M, −55% year on year, while mint stayed at 114.2M. Cheaper fees brought more transactions on-chain, but not enough to compensate: 2025 still had 310 deflationary days, 2026 has had 27.

Break-even is 3.69M TRX of fees a day, 42% above today's level. At an energy price of 100 sun, that needs contract activity (mostly USDT) to rise accordingly, or a larger share of users paying fees in TRX instead of staking — two variables this ledger does not forecast, only measures. The other route is a new proposal cutting rewards again, as Proposal 102 did. Until then TRX inflates mildly, about 0.4% a year, and this ledger says so rather than calling TRX "deflationary" out of habit.

Price is not governed by this: TRX set its $0.4313 high on 3 Dec 2024 while supply was still shrinking. There is no unlock schedule — TRX has been fully circulating since 2018, circulating equals total supply — so this page has no unlock card, and no separate revenue column either: all fees are burn.

The daily series is Tronscan's turnover counter: TRX burned (bandwidth + energy fees), USD at the day's price, and TRX minted ("node pay") — 2,005 days since 7 Mar 2021, 16.36B TRX ($2.10B) in total. Cross-check: DefiLlama records TRON chain fees of $579M for 2025, Tronscan $582M burned — a 0.5% gap, as expected when every fee is burned. State closes arithmetically: 100B genesis − 17.85B burned + 12.78B minted = 94.93B total supply, matching CoinGecko. The 1B TRX round of 25 Jun 2018 sits in the events table because it predates the series. The 8 TRX per-block reward may not be included in the "node pay" counter — this ledger reports Tronscan's published figure without adding to it.