TRON founder Justin Sun appeared at the TOKEN2049 main venue in Singapore on Oct. 8 and joined a conversation with Kevin Follonier, founder of the podcast When Shift Happens. The discussion covered Sun’s path in crypto, the intersection of AI and blockchain, and the vision behind the Sun Yuchen Prize, while also outlining how TRON is positioning itself for the AI era.
Sun says crypto should start with real user demand
Looking back at the early stage of the crypto industry in 2017, Sun said many builders at the time were still focused mainly on the technology itself. His own attention, he said, was on how cryptocurrency could be made useful in everyday life.
He said, 「People should not use cryptocurrency simply because they are interested in it. They should use it because they genuinely need it in daily life.」 Based on that idea, Sun said he began pushing for global-scale stablecoin adoption from the early days of his entrepreneurial efforts. He added that the TRON ecosystem now serves more than 400 million accounts worldwide, calling that a direct result of staying focused on real demand.
Comparing crypto with the traditional banking system, Sun said banking has gone through more than a century with little substantive change, while crypto technology at that time resembled AI today in that both are software systems capable of ongoing iteration. He said the TRON protocol completes a version update roughly every two weeks.
In his view, a technology stack that can keep evolving on its own will outperform traditional financial infrastructure that remains largely static. He also said users born after 2000 are more familiar with crypto applications and may gradually rely less on traditional banking services.
AI agents and crypto could become a major use case over the next five years
Sun said the combination of AI and cryptocurrency will be one of the most important application areas in the next five years. He argued that AI agents are naturally suited to crypto-based transactions.
According to Sun, cryptocurrency does not require KYC and AML procedures, allowing AI agents to obtain stablecoins through user-friendly interfaces, send and receive payments, and operate on a true 24/7 basis. Traditional banks and exchanges, he said, are constrained by existing operating models and struggle to support round-the-clock settlement.
Sun said, 「Blockchain is, in essence, a machine-to-machine technology, while banking services are built entirely around humans.」 He said the infrastructure value of blockchain will become more visible as the AI agent era develops.
TRON shares network figures and plans for tokenized stocks
Sun said TRON is building a financial network for the AI economy. He put assets under custody on the protocol at about $100 billion and said daily transaction volume runs at roughly $20 billion to $30 billion.
He also said TRON will continue supporting major stablecoins such as USDT and USDC, and that more stablecoin issuers are welcome to join the network.
Sun added that tokenized stocks will be issued on TRON so that all TRON users can gain exposure to U.S. assets. At the same time, he said B.AI, an AI routing platform built in the TRON ecosystem, handles about 1.5 trillion daily calls, equal to roughly 25% of OpenRouter volume, with room to move beyond that level.
He described blockchain and AI as complementary rather than competing technologies, saying blockchain, as infrastructure that is friendly to machines, can support AI’s continued development.
Sun Yuchen Prize targets faster incentives for math and AI work
Sun also discussed the Sun Yuchen Prize, which he said was formally established on Sept. 16, along with the release of its first batch of winners. The prize recognized solutions and formal proofs involving 66 mathematics problems. He described it as the world’s first zero-trust, decentralized academic bounty mechanism built around a list of problems.
Sun said traditional awards are usually based on an individual’s annual achievements, a pace he believes no longer matches the speed of innovation in the AI era. The Sun Yuchen Prize is designed to reward contributors in mathematics and AI more frequently. Human researchers, AI systems, and human-AI collaborative teams are all eligible if they solve key problems.
He said the maximum award for a single problem reaches $1 million, and that payouts for some problems have recently entered the distribution process.
Sun said, 「We are giving back the results achieved in the crypto industry to mathematics and science, generating more breakthroughs, and then feeding those gains back into the development of the crypto ecosystem.」 He described the effort as both a return to the industry and a long-term investment in the future.
Longer-term plans include AI and health
Looking ahead over the next decade, Sun said he hopes to explore both AI and health, with the aim of using AI tools to deliver real benefits to public health.