TLDR
- Tron founder Justin Sun announced plans to develop a gas-free stablecoin.
- The stablecoin will launch on Tron in Q4 2024, with Ethereum and other EVM-compatible chains to follow.
- Gas fees for transfers will be covered by the stablecoins themselves, making transactions free for users.
- Sun believes this could boost corporate adoption of blockchain technology.
- The move may be in response to Circle and Binance discontinuing USDC support on Tron.
Justin Sun, the founder of Tron, has announced plans to develop a gas-free stablecoin. This innovative digital asset is designed to allow users to make peer-to-peer transfers without incurring any gas fees, a development that could significantly lower the barriers to entry for blockchain technology adoption.
Sun revealed the plans in a recent post on the social media platform X, stating that his team is working on a “new solution that enables gas-free stablecoin transfers.” According to Sun, the fees for these transfers will be “entirely covered by the stablecoins themselves,” effectively making transactions free for users.
Our team is developing a new solution that enables gas-free stablecoin transfers. In other words, transfers can be made without paying any gas tokens, with the fees being entirely covered by the stablecoins themselves.
— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) July 6, 2024
The rollout of this new stablecoin is expected to begin on the Tron blockchain in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Following its launch on Tron, Sun plans to expand the stablecoin’s availability to Ethereum and other Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible public chains.
While the exact mechanics of how the gas-free transfers will work have not been disclosed, Sun expressed confidence that this innovation could be a game-changer for corporate adoption of blockchain technology.
“I believe that similar services will greatly facilitate large companies in deploying stablecoin services on the blockchain, elevating blockchain mass adoption to a new level,” Sun stated in his announcement.
The timing of this announcement is noteworthy, coming shortly after both Circle and cryptocurrency exchange Binance discontinued their support for USDC on the Tron network.
This move by major players in the crypto space may have provided additional motivation for Tron to develop its own stablecoin solution.
Tron’s initiative enters a competitive field of stablecoin offerings. PayPal’s PYUSD already allows certain U.S.-based users to make cross-border payments without fees, although this requires an intermediate step of swapping the stablecoin for USD.
Similarly, Circle’s USD Coin (USDC) can be transferred for free on Ethereum’s layer-2 solution Base via Coinbase Wallet, though this is likely subsidized by Coinbase rather than being a native fee-free mechanism.
The announcement comes at a time when Tron is already a significant player in the peer-to-peer stablecoin transfer market.
According to blockchain analytics firm Artemis, Tron consistently processes two to three times the volume of its closest competitor, Ethereum. Tron is also home to more than $50 billion of Tether’s USDT, representing a substantial portion of the stablecoin’s total market cap.
3️⃣ P2P Transfers
TRON leads in P2P transfers.
We classify P2P transfers as transfers going from an EOA to EOA
TRON consistently has 2-3x as much P2P transfer volume as Ethereum, indicating TRON is facilitating more payments and money transfers, compared to DeFi activity. pic.twitter.com/48n60qLRO2
— Artemis (@artemis__xyz) June 27, 2024
In addition to the gas-free stablecoin, Sun mentioned that Tron is exploring the development of a Bitcoin layer-2 solution. This would support a “wrapped” version of Tether, potentially enabling billions of dollars to flow into the Bitcoin ecosystem.
