On April 24, TRON DAO took part in "The Programmable Economy: AI & Blockchain Redefining Markets Conference" held at Cornell Tech in New York City. Co-hosted by Cornell Blockchain, Blockchain Builders, Blockchain at Cornell Tech, and the Cornell Tech AI Society, the event drew over 1,000 attendees spanning AI, blockchain, finance, and government sectors. Discussions focused on how these technologies reshape global markets in practice.
CeFi & DeFi Panel: Convergence of Traditional and Decentralized Finance
Sam Elfarra, Community Spokesperson at TRON DAO, joined a sidestage panel moderated by Cornell Blockchain's Max Tang. Panelists included David Gan (Founder, Inception Capital), Ayesha Kiani (COO, Monarq Asset Management), and Alex Weseley (Research Team Lead, Artemis Analytics). Elfarra stated: "DeFi is no longer a parallel system; it is slowly integrating as part of the same financial fabric that institutions operate within. On TRON, we’re seeing firsthand how high-throughput and cost-efficient infrastructure for stablecoin settlement can serve both TradFi and DeFi at scale." TRON currently hosts over $86 billion in USDT circulation, making it a key settlement layer for stablecoin transactions.
TRON Academy Expands Academic Network: Covers 11 Top Universities Including Oxford and Cambridge
The conference appearance builds on TRON DAO’s TRON Academy initiative, a global program bridging blockchain education and industry. The university network now includes Cornell, Columbia, Harvard, Imperial College London, Yale, MIT, Princeton, Dartmouth, UC Berkeley, Oxford, and Cambridge. TRON DAO aims to engage the next generation of blockchain and AI innovators through these partnerships. On-chain data (as of April 2026) from TRONSCAN shows over 378 million total user accounts, more than 13 billion total transactions, and over $27 billion in total value locked. The conference, supported by the Cornell Tech AI Society, brought together students, operators, and technologists. TRON DAO’s involvement signals its sustained commitment to fostering collaboration between academia and industry for an open, accessible, and innovative decentralized ecosystem.