A TRON account is identified by an address and controlled by a private key. Each account holds balances of TRX and other tokens, can spend Bandwidth and Energy to perform on-chain operations, and can vote for Super Representatives using its TRON Power. Accounts are the basis of all activity on TRON.

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Prerequisites

• Tokenomics

Account types

TRON has two account types:

Both types receive, hold, and send TRX and tokens. Only contract accounts run smart contract logic when called. No one holds the private key for a contract account; it is controlled entirely by its code and access rules.

Address format

A TRON address is a 21-byte value with a leading 0x41 prefix byte. Addresses appear in two formats:

Hex — 42 hex characters including the 41 prefix:

418840E6C5...AECED808

The remaining 20 bytes after the 41 prefix are identical to the Ethereum address derived from the same public key. To convert a TRON hex address to its Ethereum form, drop the leading 41.

Base58Check — 34 characters starting with T:

TNPeeaaF...8G1NYqeL

Base58Check is the form shown in wallets and explorers. To convert between formats with TronWeb:

tronWeb.address.toHex("TNPeeaaF...8G1NYqeL")
> "418840E6C5...AECED808"

tronWeb.address.fromHex("418840E6C5...AECED808")
> "TNPeeaaF...8G1NYqeL"

Key pairs

TRON uses ECDSA over the secp256k1 curve — the same elliptic curve as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Each account is backed by a key pair: a 32-byte private key (256 bits) and the corresponding public key derived through ECDSA. The signature on a transaction proves that it originated from the account holder; without that signature, anyone could forge transfers from any address.

Address generation produces a 21-byte address from a key pair in three steps:

1. Generate a random 32-byte private key.
2. Derive the public key from the private key using ECDSA.
3. Take the last 20 bytes of Keccak-256(public_key) and prepend the byte 0x41 to produce the 21-byte TRON address.

Creating an account

You can create an account in three ways. All three boil down to generating a key pair locally:

Using wallet-cli:

wallet> GenerateAddress
{
    "address": "TU6JdEDQ...4FQrXPCa",
    "privateKey": "b1ba1db5...74376176"
}

Using TronWeb:

const account = await tronWeb.createAccount();
console.log(account.address.base58);   // "TDpBe64D...hw2wDacE"
console.log(account.address.hex);      // "412A2B9F...8106524B"
console.log(account.privateKey);       // 64-char hex
console.log(account.publicKey);        // 130-char hex

Activating an account

An account exists locally as soon as you generate its key pair, but the network only recognizes it after activation. Until activation, the address cannot be looked up via API or block explorer queries.

There are two activation paths:

Standard activation — Send any amount of TRX or a TRC-10 token from an existing account to the new address, or call wallet/createaccount from an existing account. The sending account pays an account creation fee of 1 TRX (getCreateNewAccountFeeInSystemContract). If the sender does not hold enough Bandwidth, an additional 0.1 TRX (getCreateAccountFee) is burned to cover the Bandwidth shortfall.

Contract activation — When a smart contract transfers TRX or a TRC-10 token to an unactivated address, the transfer activates the recipient automatically. The calling transaction incurs an extra 25,000 Energy on top of normal execution costs.

Contract accounts

When a smart contract is deployed, the network returns a contract account address derived from the deployment transaction's ID and the deployer's address. Contract addresses use the same hex and Base58Check formats as EOA addresses:

Base58Check: TR7NHqje...zgjLj6t
Hex:         41A614F8...E6DED13C

The contract account holds any TRX or tokens transferred to it, and its balance and state can only be modified through calls to the deployed bytecode.

Account query API selection

Related resources

• Transactions — how accounts initiate on-chain operations
• API task map — choose account, balance, and resource APIs by task
• Confirmation semantics — choose FullNode or SolidityNode based on finality requirements
• Resource Model: Bandwidth & Energy — The resources accounts consume
• Getting testnet tokens — Activate your first testnet account
• Account Permission Management — Multi-party account control