LUNA Classic Community Has Shades of Hive Beginnings

The last few days it’s been nice watching HIVE make its way back up in value after joining the rest of the market in sliding down along with BTC. While BTC was initially moving up, it started back down while HIVE kept moving upward. Even nicer to see.

HIVE wasn’t alone bucking the trend, LUNAC, LUNA and USTC have also been moving upward. The classic coins have shown the most gains. Many are very surprised to see this movement. Including some in the Terra Classic community.

Community? What community? The coin is dead.

The reports of it’s death may be premature.

Back in May we all watched the spectacular crash and burn of the Terra LUNA chain along with their algo-stablecoin UST. Billions was lost, people had their life savings wiped out and were helpless to do much more than watch In horror.

In the aftermath, the then LUNA had a massive supply of about 6Trillion as the result of trying to protect the peg on UST. Both were below a penny in value. LUNA had been above $100USD at one point in it’s history and was in the top 10 by market cap.

The Two Chain Solution

In the chaotic days that followed, Do Kwon (the Justin Sun of Terra) was mostly quiet. The reports coming out about his alleged misbehaviour were not so quiet. Eventually he surfaced with a proposal to create a second chain. He saw the solution as similar to the Ethereum / Ethereum Classic chains.

His initial description of the two chains was the original chain would become LUNA Classic and the new chain would be LUNA. The classic chain would be able to rebuild and potentially thrive alongside the new chain. There would be airdrops of the new LUNA calculated on when you were a holder.

His proposal went to a vote and it passed. Some were very distrustful of the voting process. They believed that Do Kwon was doing some manipulation. The creation of the new chain started moving forward. Many of the D’Apps from the original chain started making announcements of their move to LUNA 2.

The New Chain Releases

The genesis block of the new chain happened on May 28th and the airdrop started. Likely anticipating a sell off of the airdropped coins, LUNAC holders received only 30% of their coins with the remaining ones expected to be dropped over the next 2 years.

The new coin reached a high of about $19USD before falling off to around $2USD.

It quickly became apparent, notwithstanding Do Kwon’s claim that the two chains would be able to exist alongside each other, there was going to be an effort by the Terra Foundation (TFL) to starve the Terra Classic chain out of existence through ignoring it.

A Community Emerges

Around this time I started watching threads in the Terra subreddits. Among the disgruntled and defeated who had decided LUNAC was dead and not yet buried were some persistent voices who believed there was community to support the chain and a will to live.

Eventually I found a discord setup where a proposal was being crafted. There were several proposals being crafted in multiple places I soon found out. Eventually I found the Terra Rebels discord.

The Terra Rebels

This discord has evolved into the center of the effort to revitalize Terra Classic. A team of volunteer developers and others have come together. They are organizing with the goal of getting TFL to let a group spearhead the development of the chain and it to be run as a properly decentralized community chain. (sound familiar Hive?)

They are examining the code for the chain to find what went wrong and allowed the collapse. Their goal will be to rebuild the code into a more robust chain much like the team who brought Hive together.

One of the proposals passed is to build in a burn mechanism of 1.2% for on chain transactions with the goal of bringing the inflated supply down to around 10Billion. Exchanges are also being asked to implement this tax for their transactions.

An active GitHub is in place and a testnet is setup.

Others are organizing to create a support structure to work towards rebuilding the ecosystem. There are projects interested in coming on board. Much excitement was generated when the StarShip Universe game would be allowing LUNAC to be spent in their game and would implement the 1.2% tax on in game transactions.

Last week I sat in on two voice chats.

The first one was on Twitter Spaces, hosted by a group called Orbital Command. The attendees included many from both LUNAs and from the Cosmos network. There was a mix of ideas presented.

Some wanted to see the LUNAC people give up on revitalization and just come together on LUNA 2. Many others rejected that idea and preferred to see the two chains co-exist. It was in this chat I first heard about the efforts to bring utility into the ecosystem.

A lot of the talk previously had centered around burning excess supply. Hearing the discussions around building out the ecosystem caught my attention. If some can be brought in, that can be built off of.

The second chat took place on the Terra Rebels discord where over 125 joined to hear the team talk about the progress they had made so far and what’s needed going forward.

They have hope and no small measure of determination. One of the big challenges right now is to get enough validators into the testnet and willing to trust the code development to implement the changes being worked on. So far both Do Kwon and TFL have not responded to efforts to contact them about officially creating a community run chain.

There is a nuclear option, forking off into another chain. (like Hive did) Their preference is to remain in the current structure if possible.

HappyCatCrypto on YouTube and Twitter

Among the many voices talking about what is going on with LUNAC is HappyCatCrypto a UK based member of Terra Rebels who has been monitoring what is happening with the revitalization effort and posting regular updates on Twitter, YouTube and Telegram.

My Thoughts

I bought some LUNAC right after the crash with the idea of, it will either sink or swim. I’m not spending money I can’t afford to lose. What will be, will be.

As I’ve watched the developments. Especially as I’ve seen the shades of how Hive came in to existence being reflected there, I’m not watching. Not only with curiousity but also quietly cheering the community on.

There is strength in a community working together with common cause. No matter how much those who want to support LUNA 2 may hope for the LUNA Classic people to just move over to them, you can’t buy community. Nor can you try to ignore them out of existence.

I’m still not spending money I can’t afford to lose. No one should spend money they can’t afford to lose. Doesn’t mean I’m not hoping for the underdog to win.