Term
TRC20
TRC20 is a technical standard for tokens issued on the TRON blockchain — most commonly used for USDT, which is issued as a TRC20 token for lower fees and faster confirmations than the Ethereum equivalent.
TRC20 is a token standard on the TRON blockchain, structurally similar to ERC20 on Ethereum. Any TRC20 token is a smart contract on TRON that implements a common set of functions (balanceOf, transfer, approve, transferFrom, etc.), which makes tokens interoperable with wallets, exchanges, and dApps that support the TRON network.
By far the most consequential TRC20 token is Tether's USDT-TRC20. It has become the dominant stablecoin rails outside of the Ethereum ecosystem, primarily because TRON transfers are cheap (fractions of a cent) and settle in seconds rather than minutes. This has made USDT-TRC20 the default for peer-to-peer stablecoin flows, especially in Asia and emerging markets.
When you send USDT-TRC20, you are sending a TRON transaction to a TRON address. A TRON address looks like a base58 string starting with "T" (e.g. TRX9J6...), which is distinct from an Ethereum address (starts with 0x) or a Bitcoin address. Sending USDT-TRC20 to an ERC20 address, or vice versa, will typically result in lost funds — the networks do not interoperate.
On SwapZilla, USDT-TRC20 is one of the most-swapped assets. You can swap into or out of it against BTC, ETH, XMR, USDT on other networks (ERC20, Solana, BEP20), and everything else supported.
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