Terra

FAQ's

What is Terra?

Terra is a blockchain protocol that enables the issuance of price-stable cryptocurrencies (called Terra stablecoins) that track the value of major fiat world currencies, providing the requisite infrastructure for a decentralized economy.

What is LUNA?

Luna is the native staking token for Terra and collateralizes the Terra economy. Luna can be staked in order to earn rewards from transaction activity within the Terra economy, as well as decide on chain governance proposals.

How was Terra launched?

Launched in April 2019, Terra’s mainnet is designed for decentralized applications that use stablecoin Terra as their underlying currency. To push mainstream adoption, Terra partnered with a formidable alliance of leading eCommerce companies in Asia, including industry giants such as TMON (Korea), Carousell (Singapore), Qoo10 (Singapore), and Tiki (Vietnam).

To date, 25 eCommerce platforms that collectively have $50 billion in annual transaction volume have joined the Terra Alliance to offer Terra as a payment option to their 50 million users.

At the time of writing, Terra has over a million active users and has processed over a billion dollars in transactions in Korea through payment app CHAI, and has a unique partnership with the government of Mongolia through Memepay.

Who is the team behind Terra?

Terra was started by cofounders Do Kwon and Dan Shin, and the team is based in South Korea and Singapore.

Do studied Computer Science at Stanford, was an engineer at Apple and Microsoft, and brings his expertise in distributed systems from his previous startup, Anyfi. Dan is a serial entrepreneur and founded TMON, one of the largest e-commerce platforms in South Korea, and brings experience and deep networks in e-commerce.

Whereas other stablecoin projects exist as technical novelties, Terra is driven by an ambitious, BD-oriented team dedicated to real-world use cases and its mainstream adoption.

What is the definition of MarketCap, Staked Value, and Participating %?

At the top of the page, we have 3 metrics per asset. For Terra these are defined as follows:

Market Cap – the USD value of all the Terra currently in circulation. This does not include any tokens that are still unvested or locked; such as Team Tokens or Unvested Presale tokens.

Staked Value – the USD value of all the Terra currently being used to stake. Some assets, such as Terra, allow unvested tokens to be staked. That is why Staked Value can be close to, or in some cases, even higher than the Market Cap.

Participating – the percentage of eligible tokens that are being staked. In the case of Terra, unvested tokens can also be staked and therefore the staked percentage might seem lower than what you would expect looking at Staked Value vs Market Cap. In this case, the Participating rate would be Staked Value divided by Fully Diluted Value.

How to stake LUNA?

There are two ways to earn rewards with Luna; either directly staking through being a validator delegate by running a validator node and being one of top 100 in terms of delegated Luna, or by delegating Luna to one of such validators.

Delegating LUNA is very easy, secure and can be done within a few minutes directly inside the wallet. For specific instructions this guide is very helpful.

How much can I earn staking LUNA?

Rewards from staking are based off transaction volume inside the Terra economy, taxes and seigniorage rewards (value gained from issuing new Terra).

What are the requirements for staking LUNA?

It is a huge responsibility to run a validator, so it is easiest to stake through delegating your Luna. As a delegator, there is no minimum requirement to stake Luna.

Is there a risk to stake LUNA?

Terra is a stablecoin protocol, but Luna does not have the stability properties of the Terra coins, which it collateralizes.

If you stake Luna, you will not be able to have access to it for at least 21 days as they will be locked.

Validators have a responsibility to report exchange rate price accurately and keep solid architecture, and those who underperform risk being slashed a small percentage. To minimize this risk as a delegator, you should split large stakes among several reputable validators and keep your delegates in check.