Justin Sun: Will Drive Breakthroughs in Basic Science and AI Through High-Frequency Incentives from the Justin Sun Prize
On October 8, Justin Sun, founder of TRON, attended the TOKEN2049 Singapore main venue event and held a conversation with Kevin Follonier, creator of the podcast "When Shift Happens." Justin Sun shared his experience in the crypto industry and, focusing on the convergence of AI and blockchain, as well as the vision behind the "Justin Sun Prize," further clarified TRON's strategic positioning in the AI era. He stated that the integration of cryptocurrency and AI Agents will be the most important application scenario over the next five years.
Original Entrepreneurial Motivation in Crypto: Centered on Real User Needs
Reflecting on the early days of the crypto industry in 2017, Justin Sun said that most practitioners at the time were still focused on the technology itself, while he was more concerned with how to make cryptocurrency truly serve everyday users.
"People should use cryptocurrency not just because they are interested in it, but because they genuinely need it in their daily lives." Based on this philosophy, Justin Sun began laying the groundwork from the earliest days of his venture to drive the global-scale adoption of stablecoins. He emphasized that the TRON ecosystem now serves over 400 million accounts worldwide, a result that directly reflects its commitment to being guided by real needs.
Comparing crypto with the traditional banking system, Justin Sun pointed out that the banking system has undergone almost no substantive change over the past century, while crypto technology at the time was like today's AI—a software form capable of continuous iteration. The TRON protocol completes a version update roughly every two weeks. He believes that a technology system with the ability to continuously self-evolve will outperform traditional financial infrastructure that has long stagnated. For the new generation of users born after 2000, they are more familiar with crypto applications and may gradually reduce their reliance on traditional banking services.
Deep Integration of AI and Blockchain: Building Financial Infrastructure for the Machine Economy
During the conversation, Justin Sun focused on the prospects of combining AI with cryptocurrency, viewing it as one of the most important application scenarios over the next five years.
He noted that AI Agents are naturally suited to cryptocurrency use cases. Because crypto requires no KYC or AML processes, AI Agents can directly obtain stablecoins, complete payments and collections through friendly interfaces, and achieve true 24/7 operation. Traditional banks and exchanges, constrained by their existing operating models, struggle to support round-the-clock settlement needs.
"Blockchain is essentially a machine-to-machine technology, while banking services are entirely based on humans." Justin Sun emphasized that with the arrival of the AI Agent era, the infrastructure value of blockchain will become even more prominent. TRON is focused on building a financial network for the AI economy. Currently, the protocol custodies approximately $100 billion in assets and processes $20 billion to $30 billion in daily transaction volume. TRON has supported and will continue to support mainstream stablecoins such as USDT and USDC, and welcomes more stablecoin issuers to join.
Justin Sun revealed that tokenized stocks will be issued on TRON to ensure that all TRON users can gain exposure to U.S. assets. Meanwhile, B.AI, an AI routing platform built within the TRON ecosystem, handles approximately 1.5 trillion calls per day, accounting for about 25% of OpenRouter's transaction volume, and is expected to surpass it further.
Justin Sun believes that blockchain and AI are not in competition but rather empower each other. As machine-friendly infrastructure, blockchain will provide critical support for the continued development of AI.
Driving Scientific and AI Breakthroughs Through High-Frequency Incentives with the Justin Sun Prize
On September 16, Justin Sun announced the official establishment of the Justin Sun Prize and released the first batch of winners, recognizing achievements involving the solution of 66 mathematical problems and formal proofs, making it the world's first zero-trust, decentralized academic bounty mechanism based on a "problem list."
He said during the conversation that traditional prizes are usually based on individual annual achievements, a pace that can no longer match the speed of innovation in the AI era. The Justin Sun Prize continuously rewards contributors in mathematics and AI at a higher frequency—whether they are humans, AI, or human-AI collaborative teams—as long as they solve key problems, they can receive incentives. The maximum prize for a single problem reaches $1 million, and recently, prizes for some problems have entered the disbursement process.
"We give back to mathematics and science what we have achieved in the crypto industry, generating more breakthroughs that in turn feed back into the development of the crypto ecosystem." Justin Sun pointed out that this initiative is both a giveback to the industry and a long-term investment in the future.
As for his plans for the next decade, Justin Sun said he hopes to explore the fields of AI and health, using AI tools to truly benefit public health.
