In a surprise to many in the crypto space, Tron has overtaken Avalanche and Solana, placing itself in the number 3 spot in Total Value Locked (TVL) after funds flood into the Tron ecosystem.
Tron, which was created in 2018 and enjoyed time as a top ten crypto project has been relatively quiet in recent months, seeming to fall out of favour from both investors and users, dropping from top ten status.
It has been noted that despite bearish prices across the crypto sector, institutional investment and development in the space seems to be unphased by the lacklustre price action, and institutional money is more bullish than ever on the crypto sector.
As crypto exchanges Binance, and Coinbase expand operations, and VC firms a16z, Babel Finance, and Huobi Ventures pour billions of dollars into funds that support blockchain innovation, Tron is the only major network that is showing bullish price behaviour that reflects the behind-the-scenes bullish confidence in the space.
Tron Passes Solana, Polygon and Avalanche in Value Locked. Image via DeFi Llama
Tron competitor AVAX fell by over 22% last week, while Solana, Cardano and Ethereum all experienced a fall of over 12%. Even the benchmark Bitcoin fell 4.6% while Tron jumped over 11% in a seemingly impossible task.
Much of this attention is caused by Tron’s “Terra-style” algorithmic stablecoin, USDD, that Tron founder Justin Sun announced would be launching at the beginning of May.
It would appear that Terra’s collapse was not enough to dispel crypto enthusiasts’ desire for an algorithmic stablecoin, as crypto users flood into Tron to utilize another stablecoin that many feel is nothing but a ticking time bomb waiting to follow Terra’s fate.
It looks as if many investors may have written Tron off too quickly in the previous bull run as TRX has highlighted itself as the clear winner in recent months. While every top ten cryptocurrency aside from stablecoins are down over 10% month-to-date, Tron is up over 30%.
Looking at the year-to-date paints a similar picture, BTC is down over 35%, ETH is down over 50%, but TRX has risen 7.5%, a clear outlier across altcoins. Tron’s increase to $5.99b in TVL gives it the third-largest DeFi ecosystem, with only Ethereum and the BSC network ahead of it.
Tron will need to see significant development on the network if it wants to hold onto the number 3 spot as it has a notably smaller ecosystem compared to its ETH and BSC counterparts, with only 9 projects in the Tron ecosystem currently active vs the over 350 on both BSC and Ethereum.
