After the collapse of Terra in May 2022, the developers of Terraform Labs restarted the blockchain from scratch – while the native token of the new network was called Terra Luna (LUNA), and the original one was renamed Terra Luna Classic (LUNC). All this caused a lot of confusion among members of the crypto community.
What is Terra Luna Classic (LUNC)
Terra Luna Classic, or LUNC, is the native token of the original Terra blockchain launched in 2018. With it, users could pay transaction fees and participate in the platform management system by adding tokens to staking. But the main task of LUNC (at that time it was simply called LUNA) was to compensate for fluctuations in the price of the algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST).
When UST lost its dollar peg and crashed, the token went into a hyperinflationary spiral and lost almost 100% of its value. To bring the project back to life, Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon decided to launch a new network. As a result, the original Terra blockchain became known as Terra Classic, and the network’s native token was renamed Terra Luna Classic (LUNC).
What is Terra Luna (LUNA)
Terra Luna (LUNA) is a native Terra 2.0 blockchain token that was officially launched on May 28, 2022. The new tokens were distributed among the community, developers of applications on Terra Luna Classic, and LUNC and UST holders. The number of tokens received as a result of an airdrop depended not only on the number of coins in possession, but also on when they were bought – before or after the attack.
Like LUNC, LUNA can be used to pay for transactions on the network and participate in the platform’s governance system by adding tokens to staking.
Similarities and differences between Terra Luna (LUNA) and Terra Luna Classic (LUNC)
Blockchain
Terra Luna Classic and Terra Luna run on different blockchains: the first one runs on the original Terra Classic blockchain, the second one runs on Terra 2.0. The main difference between these networks is that Terra 2.0 is not supported by either Terraform Labs or Do Kwon itself and is 100% owned by the community.
stablecoin
Unlike LUNC, LUNA has nothing to do with the algorithmic stablecoin UST (now called TerraClassicUSD – USTC). This decision was probably made due to too much attention from the US House of Representatives and a bill to ban algorithmic stablecoins for a two-year period.
Incineration tax mechanism
Terra aims to make the LUNC token deflationary and uses a “burn tax” to do this, removing a certain number of coins from circulation. Previously, the tax was 1.2% of the amount of transactions in the network, but in mid-October it decreased to 0.2%. The burn will continue until LUNC’s total supply is reduced to 10 billion tokens.
The supply of LUNA is initially limited to 1 billion tokens
Tokenomics
At the time of writing, Terra Luna Classic (LUNC) is trading at $0.00023375 with a circulating supply of 6.8 trillion tokens and a market value of $1.6 billion. Terra Luna (LUNA) had a price of $2.38 at the same time, a circulating supply of 156 million tokens, and a market value of $371 million.
Interest of members of the crypto community
The daily trading volume of LUNC is well ahead of LUNA. But such interest is explained not by the faith of the crypto market participants in Terra Luna Classiс, but by the speculative opportunities of the asset: in a short time, it showed an increase of 400% from its historical minimum. Buying any cryptocurrency that has skyrocketed 4x is very risky – especially one that is associated with one of the biggest crashes in the industry.
What is the future of Terra ecosystem tokens
The future of Terra Luna Classic remains unclear. Even though the popularity of the token has greatly increased after the introduction of the “burn tax”, the project is unlikely to be able to restore the confidence of investors and crypto enthusiasts after the collapse of the original Terra blockchain. Especially considering that the co-founder of the project, Do Kwon, went on the run and diligently hides his location from the authorities.
The fate of Terra Luna will depend on how many protocols and development teams that worked on the old Terra blockchain will trust it and continue to create applications on it. Cryptocurrency exchanges and major investors are currently divided on the wisdom of supporting the Terra 2.0 blockchain.
However, both LUNC and LUNA are interesting cryptocurrencies that are definitely worth keeping an eye on.