The 'Lunatic ' Movement: A Look at Terra LUNA's Inception and the People That Helped Do Kwon Rise
Categories: Crypto News US
The Terra blockchain fiasco will go down in crypto history as one of the craziest events during the last 13 years. It all started during the second week of May, when the once-stable coin terrausd (UST) lost its peg from its $1 parity. This caused a massive bank run-like event where billions of dollars worth of crypto was withdrawn from Curve Finance, Lido, and the decentralized finance (defi) lending app Anchor Protocol.Terra blockchain’s native token (LUNA) fell significantly in value as well, as the network’s LUNA/UST swapping mechanism drove the coin toward a death spiral. Terra’s entire ecosystem was wiped off the top crypto projects list, and now it is placed at the bottom of the barrel, among a litany of failed digital currencies. However, for quite some time Terra was considered one of the hottest blockchain projects out there, and LUNA reached an all-time high at $119.18 per unit on April 5, 2022. Today is a different story, as a single LUNA is now exchanging hands for $0.00018000 per unit. While many disliked Terra’s co-founder Do Kwon, a great number of people enjoyed his attitude.The Terra project’s white paper was authored by Evan Kereiakes, Marco Di Maggio, Nicholas Platias, and Do Kwon. The white paper details that the main foundations of “Terra Money” include “stability and adoption.” The Terra project was created in January 2018 and LUNA’s first recorded market value was $3.27 per unit on May 7, 2019. By January 2020, LUNA was trading for much lower values at $0.20 to $0.50 per unit. Then, in February 2021, LUNA started to gain significant market traction and eventually climbed 23,700% to the crypto asset’s all-time price high. Additionally, from October 2020 all the way until May 9, 2022, Terra’s stablecoin terrausd (UST) held its $1 parity with the U.S. dollar. Before both of these tokens and the many other crypto assets built on top of Terra, the project derived from the group Terra Alliance. The group is a 16-member international network of Asian e-commerce and financial advisory firms.The project’s official mainnet launch was in April 2019 and ecosystem tools were made available like the block explorer Terra Finder and the wallet Terra Station. In May 2019, Terraform Labs had a corporate funding round led by Arrington XRP Capital, and in August 2019, Hashkey Capital backed the team. In January 2021, Terraform Labs raised $25 million from Coinbase Ventures, Galaxy Digital, and Pantera Capital. The following July, Galaxy Digital, Arrington XRP Capital, Blocktower Capital, and others injected $150 million into an ecosystem fund created by the Terra team. Additionally, Terraform Labs invested in other companies such as Hummingbot, Stader Labs, Espresso Systems, Leapwallet, and Rain. Shin still leads CHAI corporation and he still runs TMON as well. While Shin was the face of Terra’s initial leap getting backing from Binance in August 2018, it was Kwon who accepted the $25 million in January 2021, and the $150 million in July 2021. Moreover, in the summer of 2020, a concept built on Terra called the “Gold Standard for passive income on the blockchain” was born.Terra’s stablecoin UST was also criticized by the Galois Capital executive Kevin Zhou who predicted the de-pegging incident well before it happened. Do Kwon was admired by a large army of ‘Lunatics’ and despite Zhou’s early criticisms, Kwon proudly told people to continue staying “poor.” “U still poor?” Kwon asked on social media, “I don’t debate the poor on Twitter,” the Terra founder explained. Terra rose to popularity rather quickly, but the project’s demise was even quicker. The Terra project has not been put out of its misery, and the platform’s native tokens still have a small amount of value. Today, many Terra supporters are hopeful while detractors are doubtful that Terra and Do Kwon can revive the broken blockchain ecosystem.The market has already decided, for the most part, that LUNA and UST are not as valuable as they once were. Whether or not a Terra fork and airdropping new tokens will help the project come back remains to be seen and it’s safe to say, Terra’s story has not ended.