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  1. Appendix

Glossary

Definitions of TRON-specific terms used throughout this documentation — Bandwidth and Energy, TRON Power, Maintenance Period, sun, TAPOS, and the rest of the chain-specific vocabulary.

This glossary defines the TRON-specific terms used throughout this documentation. General blockchain or engineering terms (API, RPC, JDK, smart contract) are not redefined here — see your favorite general reference for those.

Account

A keypair-controlled record on the TRON ledger holding balances, resource quotas, and permissions. Every transaction is sent from an account; every asset is held by an account. See Accounts for the full structure.

Bandwidth

The resource consumed by every transaction in proportion to its byte size after protobuf serialization (raw_data + signatures + result). Each activated externally owned account receives 600 free Bandwidth per day (chain parameter #61 getFreeNetLimit). Beyond the free allowance, Bandwidth is obtained by staking TRX or by burning TRX at runtime. See Resource model.

Block

The unit by which the chain advances. Each block contains a list of transactions, a header, and metadata. TRON produces a new block every 3 seconds (BLOCK_PRODUCED_INTERVAL). The current block becomes solidified — practically irreversible — once 2/3+1 of the active SRs have built on it (~1 minute on Mainnet). See Block.

Burn (TRX)

Permanent removal of TRX from circulation by sending it to the black-hole address (T9yD14Nj9j7xAB4dbGeiX9h8unkKHxuWwb) or by paying for resource consumption. See the Common burn addresses table.

Cold wallet

A wallet whose private key is generated and held on a device with no network connection — typically a hardware wallet (Ledger, Keystone) or an air-gapped machine. The opposite is a hot wallet, which holds keys on an internet-connected device. Cold wallets trade convenience for substantially better key security.

Consensus

The protocol-level rule by which independent nodes agree on the chain state. TRON uses Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS): TRX holders stake TRX to obtain TRON Power (TP), then use TP to vote for Super Representatives, and the 27 SRs with the most votes take turns producing blocks. See Consensus and DPoS.

DApp (Decentralized Application)

An application whose business logic runs as one or more smart contracts on the TRON blockchain. A DApp typically has a browser or mobile front end that connects to a user wallet (TronLink, Bitkeep) to construct transactions. See DApp integration.

DPoS — Delegated Proof of Stake

TRON's consensus mechanism. TRX holders stake TRX to gain voting power (TRON Power), then vote for Super Representative candidates. The 27 SRs with the most votes form the active set and produce blocks for the next Maintenance Period. See Consensus and DPoS.

Energy

The resource consumed by smart-contract execution. Energy is metered by opcode and is not part of the free daily allowance — contracts always consume Energy, paid for either by staking TRX for Energy or by burning TRX at runtime. The current Energy unit price (getEnergyFee, chain parameter #11) is 100 sun (0.0001 TRX) per Energy unit. See Resource model and FeeLimit & Energy cost.

fee_limit

A per-transaction parameter (in sun) that caps the Energy a contract call can consume. The VM converts fee_limit to an Energy ceiling at start-up and stops execution with OUT_OF_ENERGY if that ceiling is hit. Maximum: chain parameter #47 getMaxFeeLimit (currently 15,000 TRX on Mainnet). See FeeLimit & Energy cost.

GreatVoyage (release naming)

TRON's java-tron release line uses Greek-philosopher code names — Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Diogenes, Democritus, etc. — under the GreatVoyage-vX.Y.Z prefix. See release announcements.

KhaosDB

The in-memory store inside java-tron that holds recent fork branches. When the chain switches main-chain (because an alternate fork accumulates more weight first), KhaosDB lets the node swap branches efficiently rather than re-syncing from disk. Implementation detail; not externally configurable.

Maintenance Period

The 6-hour cycle on which TRON processes voting tallies, SR active-set rotation, brokerage changes, and proposal expirations. Configurable through chain parameter #0 getMaintenanceTimeInterval. Inside each cycle, the first ~6 seconds are a brief "maintenance" window where the new active SR set is computed; the rest is normal block production. See Consensus and DPoS.

Mainnet, Shasta, Nile

The three TRON networks. Mainnet is the production chain with real TRX value; Shasta and Nile are testnets. All three use the 0x41 address prefix; they differ in node.p2p.version (Mainnet 11111, Nile 201910292, Shasta 1) so nodes only peer with the same network. See Networks.

Private chain

A self-hosted TRON network running the same java-tron binary as Mainnet but isolated by a custom p2p.version and a custom genesis block. Useful for integration testing and reproducible benchmarks. See TRON private chain.

SR — Super Representative

A node elected by TRX-holder vote to produce blocks. The top 27 SR Candidates by vote count at each Maintenance Period boundary form the active block-producing set. SRs receive block-production rewards and a share of voting rewards. See Super Representatives.

SR Candidate / SR Partner

An account that has submitted a WitnessCreateContract to register for SR election. Top 27 by vote count are SRs; positions 28–127 are SR Partners (also receive voting rewards). See Super Representatives.

Solidification

The block-confirmation rule by which TRON considers a block irreversible. A block is solidified once at least 2/3+1 (19 of 27) active SRs have built on it. The solidified head lags the chain head by about 1 minute. Wallets and exchanges should always read from the SolidityNode surface for finality-sensitive queries. See Consensus and DPoS.

Stake 2.0

The current TRX-staking model. Staking gives the user resources (Bandwidth or Energy) plus TRON Power, with an explicit Stake → Unstake → Withdraw lifecycle and a 14-day unstake delay (chain parameter #70 getUnfreezeDelayDays). Replaces the deprecated Stake 1.0 with a different unbonding flow. See Staking on the TRON network.

sun

The smallest unit of TRX. 1 TRX = 10⁶ sun — always lowercase sun. (Uppercase SUN refers to the unrelated SUN.io governance token; do not conflate the two.) Sun is the unit used in all TRON API requests, in fee_limit, in raw transaction amounts, etc.

TAPOS — Transactions As Proof of Stake

A protocol-level mechanism that binds each transaction to a specific recent block by including the block's hash in the raw_data.ref_block_bytes / ref_block_hash fields. If the referenced block is forked away, the transaction becomes invalid. Default expiration: 60 seconds after construction. See API workflow.

TIP — TRON Improvement Proposal

The community process for proposing protocol changes. TIPs live in the tronprotocol/tips repository; a typical TIP includes the motivation, specification, and rationale, and is discussed in the Core Devs community calls before a committee proposal activates the change on Mainnet.

TRC-10 / TRC-20 / TRC-721 / TRC-1155

The four main token standards on TRON:

  • TRC-10: protocol-level fungible token (not VM-based; legacy)
  • TRC-20: TVM-based fungible token; ERC-20 compatible
  • TRC-721: TVM-based non-fungible token; ERC-721 compatible, but onTRC721Received returns 0x5175f878, not ERC-721's 0x150b7a02; contracts ported from Ethereum must update the return value
  • TRC-1155: TVM-based multi-token standard; ERC-1155 compatible

See Token standards overview.

TronGrid

The most widely used hosted node service in the TRON ecosystem. Applications that do not run their own nodes, or that need a high-availability backup endpoint, can connect to TronGrid. Production requests usually include the TRON-PRO-API-KEY header for identification, quota tracking, and rate-limit control. See TronGrid.

TRON Power (TP)

The voting weight an account gets from staking TRX. 1 TRX staked = 1 TP, regardless of resource type (Bandwidth or Energy). TP voting weight is assigned to selected SRs; TP remains in the account and can be reallocated with a new VoteWitnessContract. Unstaking reduces TP and revokes the corresponding votes. See Staking on the TRON network.

TVM — TRON Virtual Machine

The deterministic, stack-based runtime that executes smart-contract bytecode on every TRON node. TVM is compatible with most EVM opcodes and adds TRON-specific opcodes for TRC-10, staking, voting, and contract introspection. See TRON Virtual Machine and Opcodes.

TRX

The native token of TRON. Pays for network resources (Bandwidth and Energy), is the unit of value for voting rewards, and is the primary unit of account across the TRON DeFi ecosystem. See TRX.

Wallet (hot / cold)

A tool for holding TRON private keys and constructing transactions. Hot wallets (TronLink browser extension, mobile wallets) hold keys on internet-connected devices for convenience; cold wallets (Ledger, paper wallets) hold keys offline for security. See TRON wallet.

Related resources

Updated 9 days ago