Terra (blockchain)

Terra is a blockchain protocol and payment platform used for algorithmic stablecoins. The project was created in 2018 by Terraform Labs, a startup co-founded by Do Kwon and Daniel Shin. It was best known for its Terra stablecoin and the associated LUNA reserve asset cryptocurrency.

In May 2022, the Terra blockchain was temporarily halted after the collapse of the stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) and LUNA, an event that wiped out almost $45billion in market capitalisation within a week. On January 21, 2024, the company filed for bankruptcy.

Design
Terra is a blockchain that leverages fiat-pegged stablecoins to power a payment system. For consensus, the Terra blockchain uses a proof-of-stake codesign. Several stablecoins are built atop the Terra protocol, including TerraUSD, which was the third largest stablecoin by market capitalisation before its collapse in May 2022. The Terra blockchain has a fully-functional ecosystem of decentralized applications (or DApps), such as Anchor, Mirror, and Pylon, which utilised the stable-coin infrastructure of Terra.

Terra is a group of algorithmic stablecoins, named according to the currencies to which they were pegged—for example, TerraUSD (UST) was pegged to the U.S. dollar. LUNA served as the primary backing asset for Terra, also used as a governance token for users to vote on Terra community proposals. UST stablecoins were not backed by U.S. dollars; instead, they were designed to maintain their peg through a complex model called "burn and mint equilibrium". This method uses a two-token system in which one token is supposed to remain stable (UST) while the other (LUNA) is meant to absorb volatility.

The Anchor Protocol was a lending and borrowing protocol built on the Terra chain. Investors who deposited UST in the Anchor Protocol were receiving a 19.45% yield paid out from Terra's reserves. Due to such a high yield, some critics raised concerns that Kwon's stablecoin model could function like a "ginormous Ponzi scheme". Mirror Protocol was another Terra chain project, which designed and offered financial derivatives designed to "mirror" traditional listed stocks.

History
In 2018, Do Kwon and Daniel Shin (also known as Shin Hyun-sung ) co-founded Terraform Labs in Seoul, South Korea. In 2019, Terraform Labs launched its first cryptocurrency token. Terraform Labs raised more than $200 million from investment firms such as Arrington Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Galaxy Digital and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

In January 2022, the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) was established as a non-profit based in Singapore, with Do Kwon as director. Terraform Labs allocated a portion of the profit from UST sales to Luna Foundation Guard, to be used as reserves to stabilize the price of UST. As of 7 May, just before UST broke its peg, LFG held reserves of 80,394bitcoin worth approximately $2.4billion. Bitcoin was the largest portion of the reserve, though LFG also held various other stablecoins and cryptocurrencies.

In February 2022, Terra and the Washington Nationals Major League Baseball team announced they had entered into a sponsorship agreement which provided stadium and television branding, as well as the rebranding of the Washington Nationals club and lounge to the "Terra Club". The deal was originally proposed to the Terra community by Kwon, referring only to an unnamed "sports franchise in one of the four major American professional sports leagues", and the community agreed to pay $38.15million for a five-year exclusive partnership.

The founders Kwon and Shin each owned one share of Terraform Labs, giving each founder 50% of the controlling power. Kwon later enlarged his stock pool to eleven shares, giving him 91.7% ownership and Shin the remaining 8.3%. Shin and Chai Corporation, a Terra-ecosystem payment service company that he founded, announced on 18 May 2022 that Shin no longer held any ownership stock in Terraform Labs. However, the Singaporean Account and Corporate Regulatory Authority revealed that Shin still held 8.3% Terraform Labs ownership, and Chai Corporation announced that Shin was not able to "finish liquidating his remaining ownership in time" despite having the same share of ownership as of 18 May. The documents from the Singaporean authority also revealed that as of 18 May, Shin held 51.2% of ownership and Kwon 22.4% of Chai Holdings, the parent company of Chai Corporation.

Collapse
Beginning on 9 May 2022, the tokens made headlines after UST began to break its peg to the US dollar. Over the next week, the price of UST plunged to 10 cents, while LUNA fell to "virtually zero", down from an all-time high of $119.51. Before the crash, LUNA was one of the top ten largest cryptocurrencies on the market. The collapse wiped out almost $45billion of market capitalisation in one week. Terra-Luna operated on a two-coin system protocol that lacked traditional collateral backing. Its collapse was likely triggered by an attack on its liquidity pool and was facilitated by flaws in the underlying blockchain framework.

On 13 May, Terraform Labs temporarily halted the Terra blockchain in response to the falling prices of UST and LUNA. Despite the company's attempts to stabilize UST and LUNA via its bitcoin and other cryptocurrency reserves from the Luna Foundation Guard, they were unable to reestablish the 1:1 peg of UST to USD. , blockchain analysts claim that the expenditure of the LFO bitcoin reserves still remains unclear.

Likely causes of the collapse included mass withdrawals from the Anchor Protocol days before the collapse, investor concerns about cryptocurrencies more generally, and a drop in the price of bitcoin. During the collapse, holders converted UST into LUNA via the mint-and-burn system, which caused the price of LUNA to collapse due to its increased supply. This in turn destabilized the balancing mechanism between the currencies.

The bank run on Terra UST drove hyperinflation of the LUNA token via the mint-to-burn mechanism, causing the price of LUNA to drop near zero. Between May 11th and May 13th, the supply of LUNA increased from 780 million to 6.9 trillion, while UST supply contracted 18.65 billion to 11.28 billion. In the final hour before the chain was temporarily halted, 5.89 trillion LUNA were minted.

On 25 May, a proposal was approved to reissue a new LUNA cryptocurrency and to decouple from and abandon the devalued UST stablecoin. The original blockchain is now called Terra Classic, and the original LUNA token is called LUNA Classic (LUNC). The new LUNA coin is called "Terra 2.0" by investors, and has lost valuation in the opening days of being listed on exchanges.

In an August 2022 interview on the NFTV series Coinage, months after the collapse, Terra founder Do Kwon remarked that his faith in Terra now "seems super irrational". However, he denied that the Terra system was a ponzi scheme.

On 23 March 2023 Kwon attempted to travel to Dubai using false Costa Rican documents, while also carrying false Belgian travel documents, but he was intercepted and arrested at Podgorica Airport in Montenegro. A federal grand jury in Manhattan subsequently laid eight charges against Kwon, including securities fraud, commodities fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy. The following month, KBS News reported that prior to the collapse of TerraUSD, Kwon had sent 9 billion won (worth USD $7 million) to the law firm Kim & Chang.

On January 21, 2024, Terraform Labs declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States, listed assets and liabilities in the range of $100-$500 million.

Burn movement
After the LUNA collapse, Terraform Labs sent 438 million UST to a Terra wallet address which removes (burns) the tokens from the total supply. This was done in an effort to reduce downward pressure on the peg and help stabilize market prices.

Following this burn, the LUNA Classic community asked Do Kwon to share the burn address so the community could also burn tokens. Do Kwon advised against burning tokens, but he did share the official burn address.

This began a community movement to burn Terra tokens, in an effort to reduce supply and repeg the UST stablecoin. Changpeng Zhao, founder and former CEO of Binance, supported the movement by committing a portion of all LUNA Classic trading fees to the burn. In addition to Binance, other centralized exchanges, Terra Classic validators and project builders committed to burning the token.

On September 20, 2022, the Terra Classic chain implemented an on-chain taxation scheme, where a percentage of each transaction gets burned. The tax amount was initially set at 1.2% by the Terra Classic governance proposal, and the tax only applies to specific transaction types. The tax amount has changed over time through governance proposals, and is the subject of controversy in the community. Users argue lowering the tax amount will slow the burn rate, while others argue it will increase on-chain activity and drive up the burn rate.

As of June 1, 2024, a total of 116 billion LUNC have been burned, of which 45.9 billion LUNC were burned through on-chain taxation. This represents a supply reduction of 1.7% since the collapse. Binance is the largest burner, responsible for removing 60.4 billion LUNC from the supply.

There is also a movement to burn UST. Through Terra Classic governance proposal 11710, the blockchain was able to burn 800 million UST. This proposal was the subject of much controversy in the community. The 800 million UST were in a wallet owned by Risk Harbor, formerly known as Ozone Protocol, a Terra insurance protocol. The UST tokens were originally donated to Ozone from the community pool, and reclaiming them was a major point of contention. There were arguments to return the tokens to the community pool for development and growth of the chain, and there were arguments to burn the tokens. Ultimately, the community voted to burn the 800 million UST.

As of June 1, 2024, UST supply has been reduced by 2.32 billion tokens.

Licensing and regulatory issues
Terraform Labs Pte. Ltd., the company behind Terra, is incorporated in Singapore but did not submit an application for a licence under the Payment Services Act according to The Straits Times. It is also not a notified entity, meaning it has not been granted temporary exemption from holding a licence by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. According to documents filed by Kwon at the Supreme Court of Korea's Registry Office, Kwon filed to dissolve the company's Korean entity on 30 April 2022, and was granted approval on 4 May 2022.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a subpoena to Terraform Labs and Kwon in 2021, with specific regard to Terraform Labs' Mirror Protocol, which designed and offered financial derivatives that virtually "mirrored" actual listed stocks. Kwon refused the subpoena, and instead announced he would sue the SEC. Despite his attempts to dispute and avoid investigations from the SEC, a U.S. Court hearing in Manhattan in February 2022 ruled in favour of the SEC's right to continue its investigation into Kwon and Terraform Labs. In February 2023, the SEC charged Terraform Labs and Kwon with fraud.

On 18 May, the newly appointed Korean Minister of Justice, Han Dong-hoon, enlarged the economic crimes investigation division of the Seoul Southern District Prosecutor's Office, vowing to "track illegal funds and capital transfers, crack down on tax evasion, audit company finances, compile transaction data, and seize the proceeds of criminal financial activity." On its first day of operation, the Financial and Securities Crimes Joint Investigation Team singled out the LUNA and Terra crisis as its first investigation target.

A class action, Patterson v. TerraForm Labs Pte Ltd. et al, was filed against Terraform Labs and others in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on 17 June 2022. In September 2022, a $56.9 million class action was filed at the High Court of Singapore against Do Kwon, Terraform Labs, Nikolaos Alexandros Platias and the Luna Foundation Guard.

In June 2022, Yonhap News reported that 15 people, including former Terraform developers for the Anchor lending protocol, had been imposed with travel restrictions by the Korean government. On November 29, 2022, an arrest warrant was issued for Daniel Shin by South Korean prosecutors.