The 28th of Jan1986 the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded after a couple of minutes of flight.
7 astronauts died, a lot of money was “wasted” and a lot of confidence was lost.
What was the lesson that NASA scientists learned?
Did they learn that the Space Shuttle was a bad idea? Maybe was too ambitious to challenge Gods and Universe and try to reach the moon ? Were they buried in guilt to be responsible for the destruction of the life of 7 proud astronauts and their family ?
I think history shows something different.
It is my opinion they learned at least 2 important lessons.
First, there was a technical issue that needed to be fixed.
Second and most important lesson they learned is that they are not foolproof.
They learned to be afraid and humble and this made them wiser.
I think the Terra experiment had the same issues: there was a technical issue and there was neither fear nor humility.
Apart from this huge huge mistake, personally I think the Terra and LUNA/UST proved to work and to work pretty well.
I mean it worked for a lot of time and for a lot of different kinds of usage, protocol, ideas.
Except once.
I lost 50% of my savings for this mistake together with my hopes of reaching some financial freedom in the next 5 years (just to introduce myself in the club) and I won’t be honest even with myself if I say that I’m fine with it. I’m not fine at all with it, and I’m still feeling really bad.
But I won’t be honest with myself either if I say that I didn’t like it.
I fucking liked Terra, the community, and the protocols. I liked leverage with anchor, gain APR with compounding on Spectum, how easy was to place a delta neutral strategy with Aperture and Mirror, I liked the idea of partecipate to liquidation with Kujira, I was thrilled about the AstroWar and I was so excited in the process of learning Prism, Mars and more.
Because I know, you all always repeat DYOFR (F for fucking), but I have a 9-5 fucking job (that I also like) and I want to have a life so I don’t have so much time for the researches.
But still I tried to think about my finances and you know, TradFi is so impervious, especially for the poor guy like me who can barely join some ETF or some funds management platform that gives me at the best 5-6% year.
Also when I tried trading on the crypto market I realized it was a full time job that I cannot afford. Then I tried the DEFI on ETH, Polygon, BNB but I found everything pretty complex and still requiring a lot of time for learning and management.
With Terra was an epiphany, everything was extremely more accessible and understandable for me. I mean, just for example, I may have not got 100% how the delta neutral on Mirror works, but I feel I had grasp it well enough to understand what was going on the APR and the risks.
I have a lot more examples but this is coming too long and I still want to add a couple of other things (sorry).
So, looking at all the debates on social media, I think the Terra community and the leaders specially have learned the same lesson of NASA in 1986 and I think it would be really a shame if we will lose those lessons that we paid so much for.
Even worse: it would be really a shame if we lose something that was working and was able to give so much, even to poor guys like me. I’m pretty sure there is still a market for it.
This is why I think the experiment should go on, and I want to give my last 2 cents (literally) for this purpose.
So second part: (still sorry).
I am trying to give some technical consideration on the basis of my poor knowledge (I’m a software developer but dunno know much about blockchain that I approached pretty much in the last 5-6 months, pretty unlucky uh?).
As far as I understood the problem in short was the depeg caused by a massive dump of UST that was not able to be absorbed by the signorage mechanism and the consequent panic generated.
So my question is if we can adjust the chain based on some different assumptions:
- The peg will drop, there is no way to avoid it.
- Prioritize the retail users and the network against the whales.
- A denial of service is way better than a system collapse.
Based on these assumptions I was wondering if we can make some Oracle to calculate the maximum value of UST dump to be allowed in order to prevent an excessive depeg, then on during the block validation if this threshold is passed, it would be possible for validators to kind of chunking big transaction, prioritizing the small ones, in order to give the LUNA mint/burn mechanism to absorb it.
Also, to put in place an automatic mechanism that freezes the chain for X-hours if the peg goes lower than a defined percentage, in order to give time to a consortium of validators, builders and so on to consider some strategy and slow down the panic spread.
I know these are really naive and simple suggestions, but as I said I still have a lot to learn, but apart from the solution proposed I think the 3 assumptions I listed may have some more value.
So I’m done, sorry for the long text and all the bullshit I wrote, I still hope my 2 cents have more value than what the market says.
“…just let me say that when these frail shadows we inhabit now have quit the stage we’ll meet and raise a glass again together in Valhalla.”