USDD

What it is

USDD is a decentralised stablecoin on TRON, the network founded by Justin Sun, designed to hold a value of one US dollar without relying on a company holding bank deposits. It was launched on 5 May 2022 by the TRON DAO Reserve, and its timing became its first memorable fact: it arrived in the very week that TerraUSD, the largest algorithmic stablecoin, began its collapse. USDD’s history since has been a long march away from that model, from algorithmic beginnings toward heavy over-collateralisation, meaning more value locked behind each dollar than the dollar itself.

How it works

Today’s version, USDD 2.0, went live in early 2025 and is, according to its published audit, a fork of the MakerDAO protocol adapted for TRON. Users open a vault, deposit approved crypto collateral such as TRX, and mint USDD against it, always depositing more value than they borrow. If the collateral’s value falls too far, the position can be liquidated, which is how the system stays solvent without a central issuer. The project describes USDD as fully decentralised, with tokens that cannot be frozen by any central authority, a deliberate contrast with fiat-backed coins such as USDT and USDC, whose issuers can freeze addresses. The peg is held by over-collateralisation plus arbitrage: when USDD trades below $1, minters can profitably buy it back to close vaults.

The story so far

The original USDD leaned on the TRON DAO Reserve, which minted the coin by burning TRX and, within weeks of launch, responded to Terra’s failure by publishing “Improving USDD From Lessons Learned” and moving to a stated minimum collateral ratio of 130 per cent, backed by reserves including bitcoin, TRX and other stablecoins. The coin briefly slipped below its peg during the 2022 bear market and recovered. The January 2025 relaunch as USDD 2.0 replaced the reserve-centric design with user-operated vaults in the MakerDAO style, and an independent code assessment of the new contracts was published that month.

Where it stands

As of late July 2026 USDD ranks about 50th among cryptocurrencies by market value, with roughly $1.5bn in circulation and the price at about $0.999, according to CoinGecko. The things to watch are the collateral ratio and the mix of assets behind the coin, how the decentralised model fares as regulated, fiat-backed stablecoins gain legal clarity, and whether USDD grows beyond the TRON ecosystem it serves. Crypto-collateralised stablecoins carry liquidation and depeg risks that fiat-backed coins do not, and nothing on this page is investment advice.