Well, it’s been one wild and depressing ride this past week.
My condolences to all Lunatics who’ve lost so much. Beyond the money and freedom that Luna represented for many of us there was also the loss of of our beloved UST; a truly decentralized money that the good people of this earth deserved.
But let’s make no mistake: we are down now, but not out.
As we lick our wounds let’s all remember what we do have; a rich and vibrant community of users and builders the likes that the greater cryptocurrency world has never seen in such a short time. In hindsight, it’s pretty clear the threat that Terra posed to the satanic lizards currently running the world (and perhaps other top crypto incumbents). Terra’s rapid pace of expansion, interest, and growing faith in the ecosystem was quickly moving UST to place that would arguably be; ‘too big to fail’. From the Scum League’s perspective, something had to be done… and they fired an amazing k*ll shot - perhaps even, in the nick of time before UST took on a life all its own and went exponential throughout the world.
FLAWS IN THE PROTOCOL
It’s clear now that many of us were ignoring some warning signs; the irresponsible levels of TVL on Anchor in comparison to the rest of Terra, the selling massive amounts of UST ofc for BTC. With no lock-ups and unrestrained growth of freeloaders on Earn, Anchor was yield cow for people who simply didn’t deserve it nor understood, in part, the faith still required to hold UST. After all we had all been through a big scare in 2021 - and many of us bought that UST dip. Not so much this time.
The massive amount of newcomers and opportunists were the first ones to bail en masse as the peg deviated a few cents causing the shockwaves that led to the greater run. We can’t blame them for being scarred. Having faith in UST takes time - these newbs were ripe for a scary exodus in light of the socialized bot FUD campaign launched simulatneously by scum league on twitter.
Catering to opportunists with flashy 20% apr was a high growth strategy that simply didn’t work. UST is not Amazon or Uber - and I believe conflating aggresive user aquisition with stable growth was a big mistake in this case. But I digress… and yah it’s also easy to be the Monday morning quarterback.
I’m not here so much to talk about what might be more obvious to many of us post mortem. I want to focus on the future and preserving what we have left and rebuilding from the ashes - arguably not ashes at all, although I’m well aware it may feel like it to you.
SOL, AVAX, DOT, NEAR, etc etc …
Let me ask you one question? Is there ANY reason that a Terra v2 could not only easily rival but completely dunk on any POS blockchain in the space today? Solana, Avalanche, Near, Polkadot (and many others) have absolutely nothing on Terra. Nothing! In fact, from my limited use of these they present a sub-par user experience that makes one pine for interacting with the Terra blockchain. As many have stated, and all Lunatics know; Terra has the best UI/UX in the biz bar none. But what about performance?
Did you know that the Terra nodes (validators) came under a great ddos attack on May 9th that was described by Cosmos core devs Jack Zampolin and Zaki Manian as; "very high level & technically proficient " proving that the attacker(s) studied the Tendermint workings inside and out long before the coordinated attack? Zampolin went on to say that despite some validators (cough cough Coinbase and Binance and many others) missing large amounts of blocks due to the attack - that Terra’s complex version of the CosmWasm enabled blockchain held up insanely well. He went on to say that this type of incredible stress test only helps proves that Cosmos tech will be at the center for the new financial paradigm. It performed THAT good! Zampolin does not seem prone to hyperbole fwiw.
Aside from being built atop the best POS stack in crypto, and now stress tested by demonic central bank forces with unlimited freshly printed funds, Terra has a lot more than ‘the tech’ on it’s side. It has the most vibrant community in all of crypto; the Lunatics. Why should this change with this setback? Sure, we are all battered over this debacle - but why would we ever give up now? We have some fighting to do is all. Roll up your sleaves.
Remember, the Terra blockchain performed flawlessly through all of this… there is no reason to go anywhere. Bridging solutions like Wormhole, Axelar, and others now exist to make moving funds cross chain as easy as pie and bring new stables to the protocols. Furthermore, IBC on cosmos is a joy to use, more robust and secure than any bridging solution, and now native to all Cosmos SDK chains, with IBC messaging and accounts to come.
Take away the reflexive nature of the UST / LUNA highly volatile relationship - and what you have is a bedrock of stability and usability for DeFi; or a place we can all still proudly refer to as: ‘Home’ -a comfortable and familiar base for all our DeFi meanderings - and a chain which will still have immense value w/ or without a new native stable coin.
Let us also remember that not ONE protocol on Terra was every hacked, or even r*gged (afaik). Not one! TFL and independent dev teams did an amazing job at securing many billions worth of value on the chain. Not one hiccup, not one dollar lost in nearly 3.5 years! If you’re not impressed by that you should be. There’s a level of competence on Terra that is unparalleled in crypto, starting with Do Kwon and rippling throughout the Terra developer community. High level stuff.
SPEAKING OF DO KWON
I once heard Do describe himself as a toymaker. A man who sincerely seems to bask in the joy of invention and creation. And yes, Godzilla came onto the set and squashed his invention. This time. It’s true. Do may have chosen the wrong route to TVL , chosen the wrong algo to maintain the peg, chosen the wrong friends to help get them through tough times… it’s true. He’s only human and we humans make mistakes. But blaming the toymaker here has no merit. Accusing him of being malicious is akin to slander of the highest order. Do Kwon was only trying to help us be more free. He dared to dream big. He spoke in the face of financial tyrants. He dared to be great.
I for one would love to see Do Kwon rise from this to be a wiser man and better builder. He’s 30 years old. He has the grace and maturity of men 2x his age and he’s brave enough to dream big in the face of greatest bullies the world has ever known; those who control the world currency printer. (To call USD money would be an insult to money).
Now I know a lot of you might feel betrayed by Do in some way. “Steady lads…” was perhaps not the most appropriate tweet at the time but just imagine what was going on behind the scenes there? Brutal. Again, it’s worth mentioning WE WERE ATTACKED here by very powerful forces - this was not a protocol fail, this was not just Do Kwon’s toy car losing it’s wheels --this was an attack in which the attacker put 3-5 billion at risk in order to bring Terra down. Think about that. This was a very big enemy. I think it was a lot more than some bobby axelrod playing money games… time will tell.
So, let’s give Do the support he earned by building us such a magnificent set of protocols to begin with. And is there any doubt he can do better the 2nd time around? You can do what you want - but I’ll be investing in Do Kwon’s toys if given the opportunity. I’m not betting against this dude.
ONLY BY SICKING TOGETHER
Only by sticking together as a community will Terra & the proud Lunatic community dust itself off from the drubbing we received this week and come back stronger, with more resolve to once again make an incredible impact on the world of decentralized finance - and with that group effort we will restore the seemingly now broken dreams of many good people now hurting - soon to be restored in the future. Time heals the greatest of our wounds.
While it might sound cliche; the fact is you simply can’t place a price on a community. I’m fully supporting the fork of Terra and voting YES on this proposal: Terra Station
Furthermore, I’m asking that all Terra protocols follow suit and restore token holders on the new chain (even if you plan to leave to another blockchain) to pre-attack levels of ownership. Baring an early announcement that you would ignore the attack and carry on business as usual come what may … a reset prior to the attack the only right thing to do. Any other decision would be the equivalent of insider trading and scooping up tokens for pennies on the dollar as the city you lived in burned. It won’t fly. Please do the right thing here protocols and follow Terra’s lead. It’s the only thing that makes sense, and will help preserve the communities you already have.
NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS…
…but you can play a big role in Terra’s future - just by picking up where you left off 10+ days ago (the best you know how). Whether you’re a builder or a user…this is not time to quit. Together we can ensure that Terra LUNA (v2) will have a base of supporters that an upstart nascent blockchain could only dream about. And we aren’t hype (like most of crypto) we are the real deal- a community of builders and users thirsting for a decentralized economy and one day perhaps even a newly designed decentralized money.
Don’t give up Lunatics… no one ever promised us that this was going to be easy. Shoulder to shoulder we can help each other through this darkness and work our way well into the light. Be strong and take courage… keep fighting…and never ever give up. We are down, but never out.
w/ love,
-nachodon
