Tenth Canto: The Return to Basics

By the middle of the 2020s, TRON's ecosystem had become so complex, so diversified, and so specialized that it risked losing sight of its original purpose. Games played on it, art traded on it, financial contracts proliferated on it, but had it forgotten the farmer who wanted to send money home? The merchant who wanted to accept payments? The billions for whom a simple transaction was still a victory?

Justin Sun, showing the wisdom that marked the best leaders, made the choice to return. Not to abandon the complex applications that had grown on TRON, they would continue to flourish, but to recommit to the fundamental mission. Making financial services accessible to the excluded billions.

USDD launched on 5 May 2022, before UST lost its peg in the following days. Terra’s crisis intensified scrutiny of algorithmic stablecoins and reserves. TRON DAO Reserve sought to support USDD with reserve assets, but reserves and arbitrage mechanisms did not make its peg risk-free.

In 2022, Sun joined Huobi’s global advisory board. The exchange adopted the HTX brand in September 2023. The later name does not belong to events in 2021, and a public advisory position alone does not establish a specific ownership stake.

By 2025, TRON had processed trillions of dollars in transactions. Most were not made by speculators or collectors or degens looking for the next moonshot. They were made by ordinary people doing ordinary things: living their lives, conducting their business, supporting their families. Zeus, watching from digital Olympus, smiled. This was victory not in revenue or market cap, but in impact.