By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 19th, 2024
Beyond the UST stablecoin, Terra embodies a far greater innovation that has informed its massive coin performance thus far.
The UST stablecoin, native to the Terra Blockchain ecosystem, has inked a new milestone of $10 billion in market capitalization. With this valuation figure, UST has further strengthened its position as the biggest decentralized stablecoin in operation today. The significance of this milestone is even more pronounced when the market cap of UST at the start of the year, pegged at $200 million is compared with the $10 billion it has grown to today.
The UST growth is a function of this significant upshot in the entire digital currency and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) ecosystem in the past year. While the growth is encompassing, the Terra blockchain has recorded a significant embrace such that it has recorded some of the most impressive performances all year long.
The network’s native token, LUNA is a top 9 digital currency that has printed over 16,200 percent in the year-to-date period. As reported by Coinspeaker in the past week, the Terra ecosystem journeyed to become the second-largest protocol behind Ethereum with a significant number of more funds locked within. As of the report, over $20 billion were locked against the $17.3 billion BNB expended on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC).
The growth in the Terra ecosystem is also being modeled by its constituent protocols chief of whom is the Anchor, a lending protocol with nearly $9 billion in TVL, accounting for over half of all DeFi activity on Terra. Beyond Anchor, other protocols building and championing innovative pushes in the Terra blockchain include but are not limited to Mirror and Pylon protocols respectively.
Terra (UST) Stablecoin Role
The Terra ecosystem prides itself on facilitating programmable money protocol or a public blockchain protocol that helps in deploying a suite of algorithmic decentralized stablecoins which underpin a thriving ecosystem that brings DeFi to the masses.
The UST plays a significant role in this mandate as investors deposit the token into protocols like Anchor where it is lent out to borrowers. With decentralized finance in full bloom, fund depositors take an interest in their saved funds based on a pro-rata of all the UST locked in the pool at an interest rate of about 20%.
Beyond the UST stablecoin, Terra embodies a far greater innovation that has informed its massive coin performance thus far. Terra’s native token, LUNA, is used to stabilize the price of the protocol’s stablecoins. LUNA holders are also able to submit and vote on governance proposals, giving it the functionality of a governance token.
In all, the Terra blockchain is determined on setting itself apart by using stablecoins to harness the best of both worlds of traditional and decentralized finance respectively. Terra has the right number of partnerships to chart this course and it is also very financially buoyant, judging by the over 16,000% growth of the LUNA tokens.