LUNA, the native coin of the Terra blockchain, shot up another 37% to $2.46 on heavy trading volumes today, continuing a parabolic climb that started in mid-November.
The coin is currently up 100% in price since news broke one week ago that Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital made a $25 million investment in Terraform Labs, the Seoul-based company that manages development of Terra.
Terra is an ambitious stablecoin project from Korea working to combine the stability of fiat currency with the non-censorable nature of cryptocurrency.
Terra-based mobile payments DApp CHAI is also growing in popularity. It cuts down on fiat payment processing fees and provides near instant settlements with numerous Korean merchants.
According to stats tracker dapp.com, the DApp recently surpassed 2.3 million unique users, with almost 63,000 members using the service every 24 hours.
According to Novogratz, Terra’s ability to offer real world solutions with working products sets it apart from most blockchain-based startups.
“What’s great about Terra is they are one of the first sandbox experiments that’s getting outside the sandbox […] We are always looking at those projects because they are the canaries in the coal mines of what else is going to happen.”
Terra is also home to fast-rising DeFi projects like Mirror Protocol, which allows for the trading of stocks, indexes and commodities. The value of liquidity locked in the protocol has almost doubled in the space of two weeks to reach an all-time high of $171.3 million on Feb. 1.
Trading as low as $0.28 in early Nov. LUNA began to experience major price gains after the launch of the Mirror Protocol.
In Apr. 2020, Terra partnered with American blockchain firm Solana to bring stablecoin systems into their network.