$185 million worth of LUNA burned in past month as Terra user base grows

Terra’s native token LUNA rallied 79.66% during the past seven days as the protocol developed by South Korean firm Terraform Labs surpassed Polygon (MATIC), recording the third-highest total value locked (TVL) among blockchains.

LUNA, which is part of an algorithmic balancing system that is used to stabilize the price of the protocol’s stablecoins, traded today at its all-time high (ATH), with the price hitting $33.3.

The exploding ecosystem

The blockchain platform incentivizes trading between LUNA and Terra’s stablecoins when it needs to reduce or increase the stablecoin supply and is currently witnessing a growing awareness as the price of its native token surged more than 460% during the past 30 days.

$LUNA

This is so beautiful. pic.twitter.com/L1KjytmOy2

— K A L E O (@CryptoKaleo) August 18, 2021

With $6,21 billion TVL, Terra became the third among blockchains, following Ethereum (ETH) and Binance Smart Chain.

TVL of @terra_money officially surpasses @0xPolygon to become the 3rd highest TVL Blockchain.$LUNA #Terra #TVL pic.twitter.com/EfrFkXFOqV

— Terrians 🌕 (@Terrians_) August 19, 2021

Major exchange listings boosted the Terra user base growth significantly as Wrapped LUNA (WLUNA), an ERC-20 token that’s intended to represent Terra (LUNA) on the Ethereum blockchain and TerraUSD (UST), a native Terra stablecoin pegged to the US Dollar, both became tradable on Coinbase Pro. 

Wormhole, Anchor, Columbus-5

The recent launch of Wormhole, a “bridge” protocol that connects Solana (SOL) and other blockchain networks, including Terra, that is set to facilitate tokenized assets, including non-fungible tokens (NFTs), move seamlessly across chains, started the explosion.

However, thank to @wormholecrypto, when the mainnet launch, we can tranfer UST from @terra_money to @solana directly and vice versa.https://t.co/xDtSvQcY2P

— Terrians 🌕 (@Terrians_) August 10, 2021

As of recently, Ethereum can be used as collateral on the Anchor protocol, a lending and saving platform in Terra’s ecosystem.

The news of a new gateway for Ethereum users that can interact with Anchor, boosted the protocol’s TVL to $2.7 billion from $1.7 billion in just four days, reflecting demand for TerraUSD, which can be borrowed against bETH, a wrapped version of the stETH staking derivative for Ethereum 2.0.  

What happens when something new gets product market fit on Terra

example: bETH collateral on @anchor_protocol
– launched 5 days ago
– already 60k ETH deposited
– tons of new $UST minted by users borrowing
– an equal value of $Luna is burned
– price of Luna goes up https://t.co/yLJqNkBzgc pic.twitter.com/9b4BccX8fd

— Jason needs your attention (@JasonHitchcock) August 19, 2021

While the demand for TerraUSD grows, more LUNA tokens get burned, driving its price up. But to make it even more intense, in the upcoming weeks, the blockchain platform is due for a network upgrade dubbed “Columbus-5.”

The supply of $UST is at an all-time high. $LUNA is hitting new all-time highs.

Columbus-5 is ~22 days away.

A deluge of projects enveloping $UST and providing diverse sources of demand are ready to launch after Col-5.

IYKYK

— Terra (UST) 🌍 powered by Luna 🌕 (@terra_money) August 17, 2021

Following the anticipated upgrade launch, a plethora of new projects will go live on Terra, with a multitude of applications being released.

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