TRС20 is where people send USDT. ERC20 is where they move larger amounts. From January to August 2026, stablecoins made up 88.2% of all TRON activity on Changelly, compared with 56.9% on Ethereum. A typical USDT swap on Ethereum was 1.66 times larger than the same swap on TRON.
ERC20 vs TRC20 at a Glance
Changelly analyzed all completed swaps in 8 months. More than half of them involved a stablecoin, mostly USDT. Most USDT swaps went through TRON (TRC20), but the biggest ones went through Ethereum (ERC20).
ERC20 and TRC20 are token standards: sets of rules that tell a blockchain how a token behaves, moves between addresses, and how wallets read it. ERC20 lives on Ethereum. TRC20 lives on TRON. The same stablecoin, such as USDT, can exist on both, and each version is a separate token on a separate chain.
| ERC20 | TRC20 | |
| Blockchain | Ethereum | TRON |
| Fee paid in | ETH (gas) | TRX, or energy and bandwidth |
| Address format | Starts with 0x | Starts with T |
| Share of completed USDT swaps on Changelly, August 2026 | 23.8% | 64.9% |
| Median USDT swap size | 1.66x the TRON median | Baseline |
| USDT supply on the chain (Oct 1, 2026)* | $73.6 billion | $92.4 billion |
*Supply figures come from DefiLlama data compiled by Stablecoin Insider.
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What Changelly’s Swap Data Shows
Changelly’s analytics team reviewed every exchange that reached “finished” status across the web, iOS, and Android. Stablecoins appeared on at least one side of 56.4% of those swaps, and almost all of that came from USDT and USDC. That makes the network a stablecoin travels on one of the most common choices a Changelly user makes.
A single swap that crosses both networks counts toward each of them, so the network shares in Changelly’s data don’t add up to 100%.
TRC20 Handles Most USDT Swaps
TRON is the default rail for Tether’s dollar token. It took part in 64.9% of completed USDT swaps over the eight months, and that share barely moved: 66.1% in January, 64.9% in August.
TRON’s overall popularity on Changelly depends heavily on this one use case. Stablecoins made up 88.2% of all TRON activity in the data. When the analysts removed stablecoins from the count, TRON fell from first place among networks to sixth. Bitcoin and Monero took the top two spots, followed by Ethereum and Solana.
Put simply, people come to TRON to move USDT. Fewer than one in eight TRON swaps on Changelly involved anything other than a stablecoin.
ERC20 Handles the Bigger Tickets
Comparing the same coin across networks removes asset differences and leaves only the network effect. For USDT, the median swap amount on Ethereum was:
- 1.66 times the median on TRON;
- 1.88 times the median on BNB Smart Chain (BSC).
Put simply, for every $100 in a typical USDT swap on TRON, a typical swap on Ethereum moves about $166, and one on BNB Smart Chain about $88. These are relative values, not actual swap amounts, but the correlation is similar.
Ethereum is also less dependent on stablecoins than TRON. Stablecoins accounted for 56.9% of Ethereum activity on Changelly, compared with 88.2% for TRON and 80.2% for BSC. A good part of Ethereum’s traffic comes from ETH and other tokens on the network.
BEP20 Is Gaining Ground on Both
The third USDT network in the data is BSC, where tokens follow the BEP20 standard. Its share of completed USDT swaps rose from 19.2% in January to 27.7% in August, up 8.5 percentage points. Over the same period, Ethereum’s share slipped from 25.0% to 23.8%, while TRON held steady.
Nearly all of BSC’s gain came from the web version. On Android, BSC’s share fell.
Why Bigger Swaps Lean Toward Ethereum
Changelly’s data describes what users did. It doesn’t record why they did it. Still, a few known differences between the networks fit the pattern.
The growth wasn’t even across web and mobile. On web, BSC’s share of USDT swaps rose from 18.5% in January to 29.6% in August, up 11.1 percentage points. Mobile barely moved during the same period.
Fees Weigh Less on Large Swaps
Every on-chain transfer costs a network fee, and that fee doesn’t grow with the amount you send. On TRON, a USDT transfer uses energy and bandwidth, which you either pay for by burning TRX or cover with staked or rented energy. On Ethereum, you pay gas in ETH, and the price depends on network congestion. For a $100 transfer, a few dollars in fees is a big slice. For a $50K transfer, it barely registers. That makes Ethereum’s fee level less of a concern for larger swaps.
Ethereum Hosts Most DeFi Activity
Lending markets, decentralized finance, and many institutional custody setups run on Ethereum and mostly use ERC-20 tokens. Someone moving large amounts in or out of those services often has no reason to switch chains.
TRON Suits Frequent, Smaller Transfers
TRON’s low and predictable cost made TRC20 USDT a common choice for everyday transfers and exchange deposits. Those use cases produce many swaps of modest size, which pulls the TRON median down.
The study didn’t test any of these reasons, so treat them as context rather than findings.
USDC Shows the Same Pattern
USDT isn’t the only stablecoin where Ethereum swaps run larger. For USDC, Circle’s dollar stablecoin, the median swap on Ethereum was:
- 1.71 times the median on Solana;
- 2.53 times the median on Base.
Solana and Base are both cheaper networks than Ethereum mainnet, and attract many small transfers. The gap repeats the USDT picture: low-fee networks carry more swaps, and Ethereum carries bigger ones.
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