UST Adoption - How to improve it

Markets and Macro
1

Hi

Given the importance of UST (and other stable coins) to Luna’s valuation, I would like to share some thoughts on UST adoption as of end of March 21.

  • UST is only accessible via some exchanges and I believe this limits its adoption and becomes a bottleneck to the ecosystem.

  • UST is listed (for non koreans) only on Kucoin and Bittrex. In my opinion this is not enough and also a mistake for several reasons:
    i) Kucoin des not have KYC/AML/CFT in place which creates a regulatory risk for UST (my opinion)
    ii) Bittrex is an exchange with strong compliance but also losing ground to other exchanges

Propositions for stronger adoption

  • Fiat on-ramp to buy/redeem UST a 1:1 with a KYC/AML/CFT compliant bank or partner
  • Listing of UST on more regulated exchanges such as Kraken, Coinbase
  • Listing of UST at more crypto brokers such as Jump, FTX, Cumberland, OSL
  • Create an arbitrage on exchange (or provide discount to crypto brokers) in order to attract trading volume
  • Create onchain-cross chain USDT pair using the terra bridge (send USDT on Tron/Eth/Omni, convert to UST in Terra)

A metric of success would be to see UST to reach 10 / 20bn market cap in 2 to 3 years.

4 Likes
2

FYI, I believe I can help with some of the solutions proposed here and happy to discuss them.
I am not a dev, but have some good contacts in the industry.

3

Hi Kyu, appreciate the thoughts. Our team is working on a number of these initiatives already - feel free to ping me on TG if you’d like to discuss further: @jeffreykuan

4

I have some ideas. In order to grow the UST adoption, we need to promote Anchor Protocol and Mirror. Here are some ideas:
On Reddit: go over the posts where people are speaking about stable coins, like USDC, USDT, DAI, and promote UST that it’s a better alternative.
-Create a post on Reddit or other forums about the UST, what its it and how it works.
-Promote Anchor protocol 20% APY to defi projects like AAVE, and others that are offering yields.
-Promote Mirror to people that are interested in holding stocks and are speaking about stocks.

  • Find all the topics on Reddit/Quora that are releated with stablecoins and comment about UST.
    -Tether FUD USDT- you can go over these users that don’t know if Tether really has all these billions into their bank accounts.
    I will try to find more ideas.

Thanks

1 Like
5

Those are great grassroot kind of ideas. Love them as well : )

6

Hey, The Kucoin exchange has experienced significant growth since its launch in 2017 and is now amongst the top industry’s players in terms of security, reliability, service quality, and features.

What is the Share price of Kucoin now ?

7

Has any word emerged on a possible coinbase Luna/UST native terra chain exchange function?

8

Binance also supports buying Luna…
As a European, I usually buy Luna there, withdraw to my Terra Wallet, and then swap Luna with UST.

1 Like
9

Curious if there are any plans to put UST up on Thorswap. So users can swap USDC on Ethereum network with UST on Terra.

It seems like it’d be a great use case since Terra doesn’t seem to want to offer wrapped coins (which I think is a fine choice).

2 Likes
10

Another way to drive UST adoption is to get listed on more DEXs I believe. Ledger is one of the most commonly used hardware wallets to secure crypto assets, right? I was checking out the Ledger swap feature where users can swap directly on the Ledger Live app between different assets. The app uses a third party DEX, called changelly.com to facilitate these exchanges. Right now they support USDT, BUSD, USDC, GUSD and USDT20. Getting listed on this and other DEXs might bring some unexpectedly large traction for UST usage.

I imagine, with the current drop in the market plus FUD around USDT and other stable-coins, being able to swap to UST directly on the Ledger and stake it on Anchor would be super convenient. One can “park” their profits from other assets in UST during a retrace in the market and earn interest while waiting for the market to change and buy them back later. Especially during the next real bear market this would surly mean lift off for UST :rocket:

Going through CEXs instead as described by others above is both inconvenient and costly. Not that DEXs don’t charge fees, but the added benefit of not having to send large sums to a CEX like Binance to sell f.ex. ETH to then buy LUNA to then send to LUNA to Terra Station to then swap for UST and stake it on Anchor would be a vast improvement of the user experience!

2 Likes
11

Hi. I asked people on TG groups in the terra community which are the barriers to entry into the terra ecosystem and it seems one of the big issues it’s where and how to buy UST:

These are some of their answers:

Terra barriers into the ecosystem:

-We need a Terra Academy and a guide step by step how to buy UST on Uniswap or 1inch and how to use terra bridge to move ust from ETH to Terra"
We need videos, articles and visuals for this. It’s the main entry into the ecosystem from ETh-Terra"

-I think the fact that the total Luna supply was dropping even when Luna was burning made it easy to fud things. C5 will help."

-A lot of people want a fast return with no studying involved. Terra appears complicated at first and many won’t get past that."

  • ust not on Binance
  • I would like to use it to pay for my coffee, actually maybe I can open my own coffee shop to use it for paying in chai or EUT… :grinning:"

-I’ve had to handhold some of my friends to convert fiat into UST and then into Terra. That seems to be the biggest hurdle. I know this will all change soon, but some kind of simple graphic showing people ways it would be great in the interim."

-UST on exchanges for sure. Only KuCoin atm, which I really small."

-The main question I see pop up on Twitter feeds is where to buy Luna. You can’t buy it with fiat on Binance, you need to swap USDT/C for it, pretty daunting for noobs."

-Need Luna on Coinbase for USA peeps."

-I feel most people don’t even understand the luna-terra stablecoins ecosystem, probably some sort of marketing/education will help a lot"

-Difficult for US users to get the native Luna assets. Coinbase has MIR but it’s the Eth version, which adds more steps to entering the eco. Voyager/Crypto.com have Luna but don’t allow transfers."

-More onboarding from fiat, more trading pairs on multiple exchanges, it should be a safe haven during liquidation events. The last 1 we saw was the opposite with people jumping off ust. Can someone help me create an on/off boarding portal to rm? I could provide arbitrage services from rm to ust and vice versa. What would sell with ringgit to ust is anchor returns. I’m no programmer but I do arbitrage on usdt here in malaysia."

-P2P portal for ust/rm"

-Firstly, if people’s dreams of bear market resistance for Luna are to be realized, it needs to be on as many CEXs and DEXs as possible. That way, people can cash out to UST instead of some other stable coin.
Plus, for that to work, it needs an easy way to transfer UST to TerraStation VIA THE TERRA network (I bought some MIR yesterday on Binance and was surprised I had to go with wrapped MIR over the ETH network to Metamask, to the bridge, to terrastation -just too fiddly for most normies)
Secondly, easy integration of Anchor Earn into TerraStation or a 1-click simplified terra stable coin wallet, which looks like a fiat current account with ‘savings’ button to transparently move funds to savings.
Maybe work with exchanges to have this functionality built in to exchange wallets (but where exchanges get a cut of the interest as an incentive).
Thirdly, easy on/off ramps. Buying UST is a pain! I don’t really use Kucoin.
Fourthly, payment processors to rival Visa, Amex, and Mastercard. Or rather work with them initially so that we don’t look like a threat :upside_down_face:
Finally, for merchants and others that already accept Bitcoin and another crypto as payment methods, a bit of promotion of Terra stablecoins as a quicker, easier, less volatile alternative with 20% ANC savings attached. Get these early adopters aware of terra stables!
Bonus, have a DEX integrated into TerraStation with easy swaps to other cryptocurrencies and perhaps NFTs.
Oh, and… dark mode for TerraStation probably"

-Oh, yes, this as well - add depositing as many other cryptos as possible into the easy 1-click wallet I mentioned above so that anyone can get an easy 20% on their crypto holdings"

-I would be serious to provide arb services for rm/ust if infrastructure is there. Hope the team sees this. Or maybe a terra P2P platform only for terra stablecoin with multiple currencies pair."

-visa or mastercard integration"

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12

So Terra basically should work this way:
You take any asset you want, mirror it with Terra(UST underlying). Then you give this thing the most monetary superpowers like 20% apy stable and build applications using it.

So far i think Terra is lacking in following points from this vision:

Usability:
What do the names on Terraswap even mean? How can i find out which asset i’m trading? The naming just says something like MNT and there is not much reference to those letters in the docs.

Monetary superpower:
Build good financial products. The LP mining on mir and anc doesn’t even autocompound. Build a yield aggregator like beefy.finance for Terra for maximum returns.
More sophisticated protocols offering perpetuals and options are needed aswell.

Gamification:
Onboard game developers and build games that are play-to-earn with UST usage. Play-to-earn is very underrated.
Just in general make using Terra fun.

Transparency:
Running a monetary system that could be a world reserve someday requires responsibility.
I don’t feel that documentation is very accessible ATM. Also initial token distribution metrics would be nice to know. At some point one needs to take a small pause from building new stuff and document what has been built.

International C-Fi business:
We could maybe need something like international Terra Banks with physical locations.

UI:
People using terra would probably mainly be traders that want to switch easily between asset classes. These people want a good trading terminal.

Interactive bridges: Offer endpoints on other chains that enables users from other chains to use all the financial produtcs and monetary superpowers of Terra synthetics directly on their own chains.

2 Likes
13

A strategic alliance with bumper finance would be killer. Bumper would insure your Luna at a certain price point that the investor sets. No more crashes, less volatility.

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How does this sound?
“ Even revolutions have some rules. We are committed to complying with all U.S. regulations that help prevent, detect and remediate unlawful behavior by customers and virtual currency developers when using Our Services. ”
Cut and pasted.

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A strategic alliance with bumper finance would be killer. Bumper would insure your Luna at a certain price point that the investor sets. No more crashes, less volatility.

I am very skeptical of “No more crashes, less volatility”. If you want to insure your Luna at a certain price put in a stop-loss on an exchange.

How does this sound?
“ Even revolutions have some rules. We are committed to complying with all U.S. regulations that help prevent, detect and remediate unlawful behavior by customers and virtual currency developers when using Our Services. ”
Cut and pasted.

I would prefer UST to stay decentralized a be unable to comply with any U.S. regulations.