How Tron’s popularity seems to be fizzling out
- Tron witnessed a drop in demand in Q4 2023.
- Its DeFi sector saw its TVL climb by over 40% during the same period.
A new report from on-chain analytics firm Messari revealed that public open-sourced blockchain network Tron [TRX] saw some declines in the last quarter of 2023. This occurred despite the general market growth recorded during that period.
While other networks saw an uptick in demand due to the general market rally, Tron witnessed stagnant user activity in Q4 2023. According to Messari, during the 90-day period, the average count of daily active addresses totaled 1.5 million, falling by 2%.
Also, new demand for the network fell as the average number of new addresses created on Tron declined by 2% to 185,000 during the period under review.
Due to the decrease in daily user count, the number of transactions completed on the chain daily dropped.
According to the report, Tron recorded an average daily transaction count of 4.9 million in Q4 2023. This marked a 2.4% decrease from the 5 million recorded in daily transactions in Q3.
According to Messari:
“This decrease was driven entirely by “staking/unstaking” transactions (down 14% QoQ) and “other” transactions (down 10% QoQ).”
As expected, transaction fees measured in the network’s native coin TRX dwindled.
Messari found that the average transaction fee paid to complete a transaction on Tron in Q4 totaled 2.7 TRX, representing a 6% decrease from the 2.9 TRX paid as an average transaction fee in Q3.
DeFi vertical saw growth
Q4 2023 was marked by significant growth in the decentralized finance (TVL) ecosystem. During the three-month period, total value locked (TVL) across all DeFi protocols rose by 41%, according to data from DefiLlama.
Not left out of this rally, Tron’s DeFi sector also recorded growth during this period. Messari found that the chain’s TVL measured in USD rose by 20% from $6.6 billion to $8.1 billion.
Due to the TVL rise, Tron closed the year as the network with the second-highest TVL “and more than double the TVL of the third-highest network, BNB Chain ($3.46 billion),” Messari added.
Although Tron’s TVL has seen a 6% retracement in the last month, it still ranked as the second-highest network in terms of TVL after Ethereum [ETH] at press time.
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Regarding the trading activity on the decentralized exchanges (DEXes) housed within Tron during the quarter under review, the average daily DEX trading volume spiked by 42%.
This followed a decrease in DEX trading volume over the preceding three quarters.