In the first half of 2026, the TRON DeFi ecosystem experienced steady growth: the value capture capabilities of four core projects were comprehensively upgraded, solidifying the foundational development of the ecosystem

If the overall cryptocurrency market is in a downward cycle in the first half of 2026, then the DeFi sector is facing a life-and-death test, deeply mired in multiple development dilemmas. On one hand, industry security incidents have concentrated and exploded, with two billion-dollar-level attacks occurring in April alone: the Solana ecosystem derivative protocol Drift was attacked, resulting in a loss of $280 million, affecting over 20 DeFi projects; the re-staking protocol Kelp DAO was hacked for over $292 million, triggering a widespread trust shock across the industry. On the other hand, the trend of project contraction and shutdown continues to spread: in February, the multi-chain lending protocol ZeroLend announced a gradual shutdown; in June, the decentralized credit protocol Goldfinch, backed by a16z, officially closed; in July, the DeFi asset management platform Zapper announced a complete shutdown, leading the industry into a dual dilemma of stagnation in growth and contraction in confidence.

In stark contrast to the overall industry slump, the DeFi ecosystem of TRON shows strong anti-cyclical resilience and counter-trend growth momentum. Whether it is the liquidity infrastructure under SUN.io, such as SunSwap, SunPump, SUNX, or the lending protocol JustLend DAO of the JUST ecosystem, all core protocols have been validated through multiple extreme market conditions, and since their launch, there have been no major security incidents, maintaining zero-failure stable operation for a long time. In an environment where industry security trust has generally collapsed, they have built a unique safety reputation moat.

More significantly, multiple projects within the TRON ecosystem have achieved remarkable growth in operational metrics even in the face of adverse industry conditions. According to the "TRON Q2 2026 Report" released by CoinDesk, the spot trading volume of SunSwap under SUN.io surged to $5.8 billion in the second quarter, a steady increase from $5.6 billion in the first quarter; the native token JST of the JUST ecosystem saw an overall price increase of 38% in the second quarter, completely breaking away from the market trend to achieve independent growth.

In response to the industry's headwinds in the first half of the year, the TRON DeFi ecosystem has consistently adhered to the dual drives of "repurchase and destruction of value empowerment" and "product iteration optimization": on one hand, it continues to promote the implementation of native token repurchase and destruction plans for four core projects: JUST (JST), liquidity infrastructure SUN.io (SUN), decentralized file transfer system BitTorrent (BTT), and oracle WINkLink (WIN), strengthening ecological value consensus with a real deflation mechanism; on the other hand, it continues to iterate and optimize around core scenarios such as the lending market SBM of JustLend DAO and the DEX trading of SunSwap under SUN.io, launching innovative versions such as SBM V2 and SunSwap V4, further enhancing product security and user-friendliness, effectively driving a steady increase in on-chain activity.

This "value feedback + technology upgrade" synergy ultimately achieved a two-way growth of token value and protocol fundamentals, solidifying the ecological value foundation of the DeFi sector.

TRON DeFi Sector's Counter-Trend Development: "Repurchase and Destruction + Product Iteration" Dual-Line Synergy Drives Comprehensive Ecological Value Leap

Under the dual drive of "value empowerment + product evolution," the TRON DeFi ecosystem has taken "deflation mechanism implementation + product function iteration" as its core path, simultaneously achieving a comprehensive upgrade in the ecological asset value capture capability, as well as deepening the product landscape and breaking boundaries.

In terms of deflation value construction, multiple core projects within the TRON ecosystem, such as SUN.io, JUST, WINkLink, and BitTorrent, have all launched repurchase and destruction mechanisms, forming a comprehensive ecological deflation matrix covering liquidity infrastructure, lending, oracles, and distributed transmission, significantly enhancing the ecological asset value capture capability:

• Liquidity Infrastructure SUN.io: Continues to expand the SUN token repurchase fund pool. Since the 50th repurchase and destruction in April, it has officially included the revenue from the SUNX business in addition to the existing SunSwap V2 transaction fees and SunPump earnings; the 50th and 51st SUN token repurchase and destruction were completed in April and July, respectively, with the deflation intensity expanding alongside business boundaries.

• DeFi Lending Infrastructure JUST Ecosystem: Steadily fulfills the large-scale JST destruction plan, completing the second and third rounds of regular destruction in January and April, respectively, and launching the fourth round of repurchase and destruction in July, with the single round funding scale setting a historical high and the deflation intensity continuously increasing.

• Oracle Sector WINkLink: Officially launched the WIN token repurchase and destruction plan in July, using 100% of the revenue from all oracle services on the platform for token repurchase and destruction, directly feeding back business growth dividends to token holders.

• Distributed Data Transmission Leader BitTorrent: Also launched regular BTT repurchase and destruction in July, with 100% of the revenue generated from decentralized business allocated to a dedicated repurchase fund pool, executing destruction on a natural quarterly cycle and publicly disclosing details.

While empowering token value through the repurchase and destruction mechanism, the DeFi ecosystem continues to refine product capabilities around core scenarios such as trading, lending, data services, and distributed transmission, consolidating existing business advantages while opening up new growth spaces, continuously strengthening the ecosystem's core competitiveness:

• SUN.io: Completed a global brand upgrade in January, establishing a bilingual brand matrix to promote global operations; launched SunSwap V4 in March, significantly enhancing trading depth and reducing transaction costs through technical architecture upgrades, continuously strengthening the core competitiveness of the DEX sector.

• JustLend DAO: Officially launched SBM V2 in June, innovatively introducing an isolated fund pool mechanism, further solidifying the platform's security protection system while broadening the coverage of long-tail assets; its GasFree transfer solution saw explosive growth in the first half of the year, with stablecoin transfer volume and user scale achieving significant increases, becoming a new growth engine for the ecosystem.

• WINkLink: Completed an upgrade of the price service page in March, adding a "Market Statistics" data section to visualize core indicators such as market capitalization, supply, and price ranges over 24 hours and 7 days, continuously enhancing the completeness and reliability of on-chain data services.

• BitTorrent: Officially launched the BTTInferGrid decentralized AI computing power product in June, entering the AI computing power sector while solidifying the foundation of distributed transmission and opening up new growth space.

The implementation and continuous fulfillment of the repurchase and destruction mechanism, along with the ongoing strengthening of product fundamentals, have formed a mutually supportive positive cycle: product iteration brings continuous growth in business revenue, providing a stable and sustainable funding source for the deflation mechanism; regular deflation continuously optimizes the token economic model, enhancing the ecosystem's attractiveness and user confidence. The two synergistically drive not only a steady increase in on-chain DeFi activity but also lay a solid foundation for the long-term value of ecological tokens from an underlying economic logic.

As of September 1, DeFiLlama data shows that the total locked value (TVL) of TRON's on-chain DeFi has exceeded $5.18 billion, ranking among the top five public chains globally, on par with Solana and BSC, with the gap continuously narrowing, even surpassing both at peak times. The advantage in user activity is even more significant, with TRON's 24-hour active addresses exceeding 3.88 million, nearly double that of the second-ranked BSC, firmly maintaining the top position among global public chains, fully validating the real user scale and on-chain vitality of the ecosystem.

TRON DeFi Ecosystem's Four Core Projects Collaboratively Upgrade: SUN.io, JustLend DAO, BitTorrent, WINkLink Value Capture Capability Significantly Enhanced

In the first half of 2026, the TRON DeFi sector focused on the four core projects of JUST, SUN.io, BitTorrent, and WINkLink, achieving a significant enhancement in asset capture capability through the dual synergy of token deflation mechanisms and product function iterations. This strategic path not only effectively strengthened the protocol fundamentals but also further solidified the value foundation of the TRON DeFi ecosystem through the deep resonance of token value and business growth.

Liquidity Infrastructure SUN.io: Launching SunSwap V4 to Reshape DEX Trading Efficiency, SUN Repurchase and Destruction Funding Sources Continuously Expanding

In the first half of 2026, SUN.io implemented multiple key actions around brand globalization, product experience upgrades, and token value empowerment, completing a multi-dimensional upgrade across the entire chain from brand recognition, product capability to value mechanism, significantly enhancing the ecosystem's overall competitiveness.

In terms of brand building, SUN.io has achieved a global development strategy with bilingual brand synergy. In January this year, SUN.io completed a comprehensive brand refresh, adding the Chinese brand "Sun Wukong," with all core products under its umbrella completing unified naming in both Chinese and English: the DEX platform SunSwap was named "Wukong Exchange" in Chinese, the meme issuance platform SunPump was named "Wukong Launch," and the derivatives trading platform SunX was named "Sun Wukong," along with the launch of the official Chinese version of the "Sun Wukong" webpage. Thus, the main product matrix of SUN.io now fully covers core DeFi sectors such as "DEX spot trading + meme asset issuance + perp derivatives trading," leveraging the dual operational advantages of bilingual brands to accurately reach user groups in different global regions and promote the collaborative development of the global ecosystem.

In terms of product experience, SUN.io continues to iterate its core protocol, significantly lowering user trading thresholds and costs through technological innovation. On March 2, the DEX platform SunSwap under SUN.io officially launched version V4, innovatively introducing six major features: singleton mode (unified management of liquidity pools), native TRX direct access (TRX can be exchanged directly without wrapping), lightning accounting (unified differential settlement), hooks (custom trading rule plugins), custom accounting (customized settlement strategies), and subscribers (real-time notifications for position changes), pushing the protocol's customizability and extensibility to new heights and unlocking more innovative scenarios for the DeFi ecosystem. More importantly, within less than five months of the SunSwap V4 launch, liquidity and trading volume have both seen rapid growth, with liquidity peaking at $108 million and 24-hour trading volume exceeding $70 million at peak times, demonstrating strong growth momentum.

In addition, SUN.io completed a comprehensive upgrade of the Universal Router smart routing contract in May this year, supporting optimal path automatic exchanges across multiple liquidity pools, further enhancing trading efficiency.

According to the latest public data released on September 1, the current total locked value (TVL) on the SUN.io platform is approximately $650 million, with the number of launched liquidity pools exceeding 26,500. In the past seven days, the total trading volume on the platform exceeded $514 million, with over 112,000 transactions, and all core operational metrics have maintained a steady upward trend.

In terms of token value empowerment, SUN.io is accelerating the deflation process of the ecological token SUN by continuously expanding the sources of repurchase and destruction funding. Since the 50th repurchase and destruction (executed on April 25), SUN.io has officially included the revenue from the SunX derivatives business into the SUN token repurchase fund pool, significantly expanding the source boundaries for destruction funding, while adjusting the destruction execution cycle to be uniformly announced in mid-month of each quarter, making the deflation rhythm more transparent and predictable.

As of September 1, since the repurchase and destruction mechanism was officially launched in December 2021, SUN.io has continuously executed 51 rounds of destruction operations, with a total of 678,547,188.32 SUN tokens destroyed, just a step away from the 700 million mark, and the deflation intensity of the ecological token continues to strengthen.

JustLend DAO's Real Earnings Continue to Boost JST Repurchase and Destruction, Diverse Product Matrix Flourishes

As the core value pillar of the TRON DeFi ecosystem, the JUST ecosystem has driven multiple rounds of large-scale repurchase and destruction of JST tokens in the first half of 2026, relying on the continuous stable profitability of the core protocol JustLend DAO, successfully constructing a complete value closed loop of "real business revenue → regular deflation implementation → positive enhancement of token value." Driven by this closed loop, the value of JST tokens has achieved exponential growth: the price rose from $0.04 at the beginning of the year to a peak of $0.11, with a cumulative increase of over 275%; the market capitalization rose from about $400 million at the beginning of the year to a peak of $868 million, setting a new high since 2022, with a price of $0.101 on September 1.

At the same time, JustLend DAO's diverse product matrix is flourishing, covering multiple high-potential sectors such as lending, liquidity staking, energy leasing services, and smart wallets, opening up new long-term growth spaces for the ecosystem.

As the year 2026 began, JST has completed three rounds of large-scale regular destruction, with each round of destruction funding exceeding $20 million, and a total of over $70 million invested in repurchase and destruction in the first half of the year, with nearly 90% coming from the real operating net income of JustLend DAO:

Second round (January 14): Destroyed approximately 525 million JST, accounting for 5.30% of the total supply, corresponding to funding of $21 million;

Third round (April 15): Destroyed approximately 271 million JST, accounting for 2.74% of the total supply, corresponding to funding of $21.3 million;

Fourth round (July 17): Regular destruction combined with the historical stable fee special destruction of USDJ, totaling approximately 355 million JST destroyed, accounting for 3.59% of the total supply, corresponding to funding of $34.59 million, setting a historical high for single round destruction funding.

So far, JST has completed four rounds of large-scale repurchase and destruction plans, with a total of 1.711 billion JST tokens destroyed, accounting for about 17.29% of the total token supply, with a cumulative funding scale exceeding $94.62 million. Except for the USDJ historical stablecoin special destruction in the fourth round (valued at approximately $10.39 million), all regular repurchase and destruction funding has come 100% from the real business income of JustLend DAO.

According to the latest publicly disclosed financial data from the official page, the cumulative net income of the JustLend DAO platform has exceeded $94.2 million, and the total scale of funds invested in the JST repurchase and destruction fund pool is approaching $105 million. After deducting the $10.39 million from the USDJ special historical stable fee, nearly $94 million of the repurchase and destruction funds all come from the real income generated by the platform's daily operations. The platform still reserves about $10.34 million of stock reserve income, which will be invested in the next regular destruction process according to the established plan.

As the core protocol of the JUST ecosystem, JustLend DAO has formed four core business segments: lending market (SBM), liquidity staking (sTRX), energy leasing (Energy Rental), and GasFree transfer solution (GasFree), with each segmented track firmly positioned at the industry forefront, forming a stable and diverse revenue matrix.

In the core lending sector, JustLend DAO's lending market SBM has long maintained a TVL ranking among the top five globally in the Lending sector. According to DeFiLlama data released on August 11, the current TVL of JustLend DAO's lending market SBM has reached $3.38 billion, ranking fourth in the global decentralized lending sector. In June this year, the platform officially launched SBM V2, innovatively introducing an isolated fund pool mechanism, significantly enhancing the overall security of the platform while broadening the coverage of new asset types. On the asset side, the platform has added a dedicated lending market for U assets in the first half of 2026, continuously improving asset layout.

In the liquidity staking sector, JustLend DAO's sTRX product has accumulated over 9.73 billion TRX staked, with the number of participating addresses exceeding 17,000, and the total staking scale and number of participating users have consistently shown a steady upward trend. Based on the energy leasing market derived from the liquidity staking ecosystem, with a flexible model of "rent as needed, pay as you go," it addresses the pain point of needing to stake large amounts of TRX for a long time to reduce on-chain gas costs, with the cumulative number of participating users exceeding 80,000.

In August this year, JustLend DAO further launched a new TRON energy buy-on-demand service—Energy Purchase, allowing users to buy the required energy in one go based on actual needs. Compared to directly burning TRX to obtain on-chain resources, this product can save users up to approximately 64% in transaction fees.

Thus, JustLend DAO has built a gas cost optimization tool matrix covering "Energy Rental + Energy Purchase + GasFree transfer solution," centered around the core goal of "lowering on-chain usage thresholds."

Among them, the GasFree transfer solution has grown into a new growth engine for the platform: this feature allows users to participate in on-chain transactions without holding the native token TRX, directly deducting on-chain transaction fees from the target asset being transferred, fundamentally removing the native token holding threshold for ordinary users. Currently, GasFree supports transaction fee deductions for the two stablecoins USDT and USDD (with USDD officially integrated in August this year), and the user scale and transfer amounts are in a phase of rapid growth.

According to the "TRON Q2 Report" data released by CryptoQuant, the weekly transfer scale of GasFree reached $2.9 billion in the last week of June, having set a historical record of $3 billion in a single week at the beginning of May. As of September 1, the cumulative transaction volume of stablecoins transferred through GasFree has exceeded $132.6 billion, processing over 7.7 million transactions, saving global users over $8.48 million in transaction fees, and is rapidly growing into an indispensable new growth curve for the JustLend DAO ecosystem.

In addition to continuous product iteration and accelerated growth of core businesses, JustLend DAO is also expanding external collaborations to open up user acquisition channels. On July 6, JustLend DAO was officially integrated into the DeFi interface of the Binance wallet, with its fund pool going live simultaneously, directly reaching a massive user base from leading CEXs; subsequently, the platform, in collaboration with core TRON ecosystem projects such as USDD and SUN.io, launched the "TRON DeFi Summer" carnival, with a total prize pool of up to $4.5 million. This series of cross-ecosystem collaborative initiatives not only brought considerable incremental funds and new user groups to JustLend DAO but also established a complete user conversion chain from the leading CEX traffic pool to the TRON ecosystem, opening up new upward space for the platform's long-term revenue growth.

BitTorrent Launches Decentralized Computing Power Network BTTInferGrid to Enter AI Sector, Initiates Long-Term BTT Repurchase and Destruction Plan

The first half of 2026 marks a period of value reshaping for BitTorrent, with key breakthroughs in three dimensions: regulation, business, and token economics. The regulatory uncertainties that have plagued the ecosystem for three years have been completely eliminated, core business products are steadily iterating, a decentralized AI product has been launched to enter the AI sector, and a long-term BTT repurchase and destruction plan has been initiated, achieving a comprehensive upgrade from external environmental clearing to endogenous value reshaping.

The starting point of this round of value reshaping is the complete clearance of regulatory risks that have troubled the ecosystem for three years. On March 6, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officially agreed to withdraw all charges against Sun Yuchen, the TRON Foundation, and the BitTorrent Foundation, marking the end of a three-year regulatory dispute and eliminating the policy uncertainties that hindered the ecosystem's development, clearing institutional obstacles for subsequent strategic advancement. Following this, on May 27, BTT was listed on Thailand's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Bitkub, with the BTT/THB trading pair launched simultaneously, allowing Thai users to trade directly in Thai baht, effectively broadening the liquidity depth and global market coverage of the token.

In terms of core business, BitTorrent's product iteration is steadily advancing. On June 5, the BitTorrent Neo client, designed for macOS, was officially launched, achieving efficient and smooth file sharing with a lightweight architecture and simple interface, further consolidating its user experience advantage in the P2P transmission field.

In terms of emerging sector layout, BitTorrent has officially entered the decentralized AI computing power field. On June 17, the core AI strategic product BTTInferGrid was launched, building a DePIN computing power network for AI inference scenarios. BTTInferGrid not only reconstructs the traditional computing power supply model through decentralization but also marks BitTorrent's entry into the decentralized AI sector, opening up a new growth curve for the entire ecosystem.

In the token value system, BitTorrent has initiated the BTT repurchase and destruction mechanism to achieve asset value upgrades. On July 6, the official announcement stated that 100% of the revenue generated from decentralized business would be allocated to a dedicated BTT repurchase fund pool, with regular repurchase and destruction executed on a natural quarterly basis. This mechanism fundamentally reshapes the value capture logic of BTT, upgrading it from a circulation and governance tool within the ecosystem to a core asset anchored to real business revenue with continuous deflation attributes, allowing community users to share in the long-term dividends of ecological development as the business expands.

WINkLink: Oracle Services Continue to Upgrade, Repurchase and Destruction Boost Token Value

As the core oracle infrastructure of the TRON ecosystem, WINkLink has continuously upgraded in the first half of the year around multiple dimensions such as product functionality, asset coverage, and token value, solidifying its on-chain data service capabilities while converting business dividends into long-term token value through the implementation of a repurchase and destruction mechanism.

In terms of product functionality, WINkLink completed an upgrade of its price service page on March 27, adding a "Market Statistics" section that visualizes core indicators such as market capitalization rankings, circulating and total supply, and price ranges over 24 hours and 7 days, significantly enhancing the completeness and readability of data services, better supporting the diverse needs of developers and financial protocols.

In terms of asset coverage, the range of assets fed by WINkLink's oracle continues to expand: on April 13, U price information was added, along with the launch of U/TRX and U/USD trading pairs; on June 9, KGST price information and KGST/TRX trading pairs were added, continuously enriching the supply of on-chain price data and covering more asset types.

In terms of token value empowerment, WINkLink launched the WIN token long-term repurchase and destruction plan on July 6, clearly stating that all revenue from providing oracle services to the TRON ecosystem would be used for WIN repurchase and destruction, with each round of destruction data publicly disclosed around mid-next quarter. This mechanism directly binds ecological business revenue to token value, continuously optimizing the token supply structure through repurchase and destruction, thus creating a positive resonance between the underlying protocol service capabilities and token value. Since the announcement of the repurchase and destruction plan, the price of WIN tokens has rapidly climbed, rising from approximately $0.00002055 on the announcement day to $0.00002514 on July 29, with an increase of about 22.5%, intuitively reflecting the value enhancement effect brought by the deflation mechanism.

In addition, WINkLink has gained recognition from multiple exchanges since the beginning of the year, with WIN officially listed on Thailand's leading cryptocurrency exchange Bitkub on January 30, and again listed on the Baltex exchange on February 28, broadening the global market coverage of the token in advance.

In summary, looking back at the first half of 2026, against the backdrop of widespread industry contraction, the TRON DeFi ecosystem has carved out an independent counter-trend growth curve, characterized by safety, supported by real earnings, driven by product iteration, and leveraging full-chain deflation as a value grasp. From DEX to lending, from oracles to distributed transmission, multiple core sectors have synergistically exerted force, not only solidifying the value moat of ecological assets but also establishing core competitiveness that transcends market cycles through an economic model of "business dividends feeding back to the community"—continuously solidifying the DeFi foundation while providing a solid value base for new sector layouts such as AI.