Terra (LUNA) sets new ATH as network activity increases

Terra’s native token LUNA rallied over 31% during the past seven days as the crypto’s price broke another record high crossing $34,3 earlier today.

With a current market cap of roughly $13,4 billion, LUNA witnessed a significant recovery since the May crash, when it was trading just above $4.1.

The Terra ecosystem

Terra is a decentralized blockchain platform founded in 2018 by South Korean firm Terraform and its native token LUNA is largely used for stabilizing the price of the protocol’s stablecoins and for incentivizing the platform’s validators.

While being the algorithmically-governed stablecoin platform’s native token, LUNA is elemental for the entire Terra ecosystem, which keeps rapidly expanding.

The @terra_money ecosystem is expanding more than ever. Are you familliar with these projects?$LUNA #Terra #Terraecosystem pic.twitter.com/uNnBlGQNtC
— Terrians 🌕 (@Terrians_) August 24, 2021

Key projects on Terra include Anchor, a decentralized (DeFi) savings protocol that offers yields on stablecoins and the synthetic asset protocol Mirror that enables investing in tokenized stocks and trading synthetic assets, which can also be added to liquidity pools.

With only six protocols, Terra recently surpassed Polygon (MATIC), recording the third-highest total value locked (TVL) among blockchains.

Per Defillama, #Terra has the 3rd highest TVL behind Ethereum and BSC w/ $6.4B
It’s also the only chain with >$1B TVL w/ less than 10 protocols (6)
+ it’s still among the cheapest L1s in terms of Mcap/TVL ≈ 2 (Eth ≈ 3.4, BSC ≈ 4.1)
Too many reasons to be bullish $LUNA
— Legomakers.UST 🌖 (@tlagomi) August 24, 2021

While experiencing a 12.87% increase in the past seven days and currently recording $6,58 billion TVL, the platform keeps reaffirming its place at the very top, falling behind the ultimate chieftains among blockchains, Ethereum with $115.2 billion TVL and 201 protocols and Binance Smart Chain with $18.73 billion and 70 protocols.

Major upgrade coming

Columbus-5, a major mainnet upgrade that is close to unraveling, has plenty in store for Terra’s flourishing ecosystem.

1/ As we approach the launch of Col-5, the anticipation and excitement is mounting.
TFL has been hard at work updating our frontend interfaces, rigorously testing smart contract migrations, and making sure everything is perfectly set and ready for takeoff.
— Terra (UST) 🌍 Powered by LUNA 🌕 (@terra_money) August 23, 2021

One of the most important upgrades of the Terra blockchain to date is set to simplify the system’s tokenomics while burning seigniorage and making the native token LUNA even more deflationary.

In addition, the upgrade will enable further integration, while opening the floodgates for a multitude of protocols and dapps.

The upgrade to Columbus-5 on the Terra mainnet will enable an anticipated implementation of Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC).

👀
IBC coming to @terra_money on Sept 9 means we’ll have a lot more assets available on @wormholecrypto and @solana, with Terra being the hub for all cross-chain activity
It’s a great time to be part of the $SOL and $LUNA communities https://t.co/J8BrITmm7Y
— Ian Macalinao 🦀 (@simplyianm) August 24, 2021

The introduction of IBC for the Cosmos Ecosystem is anticipated to further boost Terra’s use case.

Building a highway between two great Cities.
Hub <> Terra IBC connection coming in September https://t.co/J0YTpQLDt1
— Wickex (@Wickex2) August 18, 2021

With TerraUSD (UST) already being the fifth largest stablecoin by market cap, it’s impossible to predict how high LUNA will climb following the critical launch.