Friday, December 24, 2021

Unpopular Opinion.

I don't think the Bitcoin dip is over, if it holds out over the weekend and on into next week then well be good but if not then I think Dogelon is gonna gain another zero once more before the market starts to rise again in Q1 of next year especially after this recent large percentage increase not only on Dogelon but on most of the major alt-coins, there's gonna be a retracement I feel which is indicated by the RSI of many of the coins being extremely overbought. Crypto.com finally listing it on the Top Gainers list is a very good thing though and long overdue. As always this is just my view in the recent events and I could absolutely be very wrong

💧re:water begins.

The Liquidity Metaverse for the Global Crypto Market. Meet the new utility for crypto-tokens — “Political Weight”.

💧re:water is here to summarize all the liquidity of decentralized finance and provide a single, fair and neutral method of Property and Political Discussion for all market participants.

If the world needs a decentralized economy, it also needs an instrument to effectively defend it.

The Mechanics

WATER TOKEN

The water token appears. Its function is to become a measure of value for every existing token in the crypto market. Consider this token as a value parity index. It is an artificial standard for the current fair economic “weight” of each existing token.

It also symbolizes water, literally water — a token of water. (Liquidity, whales, circulation — all this, by the way, is not primarily about finance, it’s about water.). This token has a cash value!

That is, the Water Token ($WTR) has had a guaranteed value since day one. Its immediate liquidity is ensured by both the unique initial distribution of water tokens in the system, and the primary Liquidity Generation Event. 90% of all collected funds are allocated to provide the water token with cash value in one way or another. The absolute majority of funds raised have been directed to provide liquidity for a token.

IN SHORT: If you have water tokens, you can convert/sell them immediately & get new Tiles in Conflicts & Increase Gravity for existing Tiles in your hands.

THE CLOUD. WATER STORAGE.

The Water tokens are hosted in the Global No Man’s Cloud. This cloud is neutral for everyone, like those bitcoins that have yet to be mined.

The global Cloud holds 90% of all water tokens. Yes, yes, yes, this project is being launched with an unprecedented level of emphasis on integrity — 90% of the assets are not distributed from the start.

IN SHORT: the absolute majority of water is in the public Global Cloud. The Water in the cloud will be mined according to the algorithmic rules of the 💧re:water Project throughout the history of its existence. Anyone can join the Project and earn water tokens.

LAND — MINING.

All Water in Cloud eventually falls in the form of rain to the land. However land is a limited commodity. There are 516,000 “Tiles” or land plots. Therefore in order to mine, you need to have at least one tile, and then you wait for the rain to fall.

To get more water into your piece of land, it must be as heavy as possible. The gravity/mass is gained through the tokens that you stake in your Tile. The more water tokens (or ANY other token) you put into a specific land Tile - the more water ($WTR) will be drawn into it during the next rainfall.

Use ANY TOKENS to add weight to your Tile and get more water.

IN SHORT: Anybody can get Tile. Tiles or Lands are used to generate income from algorithmic regular drops of Water (WTR) tokens from Decentralized Water Cloud Storage. Every Tile has a Gravity index which directly reflects on how much Water ($WTR) Tokens this Till receives respectively to other, from 516,000, Tiles. Gravity can be increased by putting any token into it, as into a decentralized liquidity pool.

HOW TO MINE WATER

Take possession of at least one Tile/land plot
Make it heavy! Put water tokens or ANY other tokens in it to increase the gravity of the Tile.
Just wait for the rain.
Profit.

Everything is proofed by blockchain.

CONFLICTS. LAND OWNERSHIP CAN BE LEGALLY TAKEN OVER.

In the 💧re:water Ecosystem, it is possible to appropriate someone else’s “mining farm”. Take possession of a profitable Tile and all of its staked assets. Yes, it’s legal. And yes — you can lose in an attempt to take someone else’s Tile.

IN SHORT: Tile/Lands can be captured from one 💧re:water member to another in Conflicts. To make capture possible, a player needs to bet $WTR tokens. On the win, all assets within sieged Tile will be transferred to an intruder. If Tile resists, $WTR tokens of an intruder will be acquired by a defender-Tile. Gravity of Tile defines the strength of a Tile on Conflicts.

Participation in any risk-involving activity is entirely voluntary. One may choose to participate risk-free simply by buying, selling, or holding water tokens.

ALLIANCES AND UNIONS.

In the real world, when all the free space is occupied, conflicts over redistribution are inevitable. This is exactly what crypto has been missing. This is what is now emerging.

You can fight for justice, you can unite your communities with shared aims and motives, and in an organized way “fight” for a place under the sun. Or rather, for a place under the cloud of money. The larger YOUR area is, the louder your idea is heard, if you have one, of course…

IN SHORT: In 💧re: water metaverse, Tile-owners can merge into alliances which guarantees collective power to serve every individual of an alliance. However, joining an alliance with its benefits lead to consequential obligations. A player will share all wins and losses of an alliance equally with other members.

Join r/rewaternow community.

Particl

What the heck is Particl ?

"To me it's all about freedom." ( CryptoGuard, Head of Communication department at Particl )

Particl is an open source Cyberpunk / Libertarian software project. Its aim is to build tools that protect individual freedom and privacy.

Particl on Coingecko: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/particl

The team behind this project are known for being innovators in the cryptocurrency scene, being the first to produce many feats such as an HTML5 wallet, a staking mobile wallet with encrypted messaging and transactions, as well as having the first ring signature and HD wallet implementation on BTC codebase. Their Angular.js graphical wallet is widely known in the “altcoin” community for being absolutely gorgeous and very user-friendly.

What's behind the hood of Particl ?

The main principle components of the Particl Platform on which the privacy-centric dApps can be built is:

Blockchain protocol: It is based on an always up-to-date Bitcoin Core codebase with added privacy features like CT, RingCT, Stealth addresses, Bulletproofs, etc. The privacy implementations are audited by Quarkslab and several academic groups. For consensus rules it uses an improved PoSV3 with enabled cold-staking, allowing it to be quantum resistant.

This component can be used in dApps for privacy-preserving financial transaction, on-chain contracts via Script, settlement layer, voting, digital identities, etc

If you are interested in more technical details, take a look at this article explaining those in detail but in a very comprehensive manner:

https://particl.news/particl-explained-private-transactions-44cb120d9cd/

Note: Particl's team was the first one to modify Monero's RingCT algorithm and make it suitable for any codebase. Here is the Quarkslab audit on that:

https://blog.quarkslab.com/security-audit-of-particl-bulletproof-and-mlsag.html

Their Flagship dApp: Particl Marketplace

Their flagship dApp is a private-by-design fully decentralized Amazon-like e-commerce platform, called Particl Marketplace. After 3+ years of hard work and almost 1+ year of semi-open public beta testing, it is released to the general public. Anyone, anywhere can buy and sell goods and services in total privacy with the added advantage of very low fees. The platform is a mix of P2P and blockchain technologies and it is exclusively run by its worldwide users who are running nodes. The marketplace is private by default with no identifiable data being linked to users. Transactions are hidden on the blockchain, metadata is removed from images and data exchange and communications encrypted. This decentralized marketplace is certainly a huge step forward in countering the predatory behavior of the current big players such as Amazon, eBay and Alibaba.

"Silkroad, Ebay, Amazon on Steroids, without the hassle" ( Humble ahah )

So now we hear you ask, in the event of things going pear-shaped and one of the parties to a transaction doesn’t perform, who is going to be the arbiter? Well, in the true spirit of decentralization there isn’t one. There is however, an innovative system of double deposit escrow called MAD which stands for mutually assured destruction. Both parties to a transaction need to match, as a security deposit into an escrow smart-contract, the value of the item being purchased by the buyer plus the shipping costs. Then once the buyer confirms confirm that the transaction has been completed satisfactorily, the security deposits are returned back less only the regular cryptocurrency transaction fees and the seller also gets their payment. If there is a dispute, both buyer and seller are forced to reach a settlement as neither of them will want to lose the deposit. As the marketplace evolves, a new feature will be soon be added to the escrow system. There will be an adjustable escrow rate wherein a sliding scale of the required escrow amount will be available. There will also be an escrow opt-out option in the event that both buyer and seller have absolute trust in each other.

Another key ingredient here is is that the users create by default "invite-only" markets and can choose to make them publicly accessible by paying a tiny fee to broadcast the "invitation" (essentially decryption keys for that market specific data) on the p2p network for a limited period of time (up to 7 days). If one chooses to share manually the "invitation" via some other communication channel e.g some forum, then the market remain "secret" and only accessible by those who have an invitation. Simply put, it is impossible for anyone without an "invitation" to even detect that the specific market exists. While I don't want to make any assumptions on what can / will be traded on those "secret markets", one can imagine the potential of a brand new "Silkroad" , but decentralized this time, and with a clever escrow mechanism to protect both buyers and sellers. ( I won't go into a debate about what is good or bad for you, it's a very personal matter and each of you have their own opinion on this ).

Lastly, Particl Market place is meant to be crypto agnostic in a near future, meaning you can use any crypto token on the marketplace seamlessly thanks to the upcoming PARTICL PRIVATE DEX Atomic Swap feature.

The Particl Coin

The native token PART has multiple roles and it's essential to all the Particl Platform dApps and their functionalities. Imho the shortest closest to reality description of the PART token is as shares of a decentralized platform cooperative (despite the fact that it is also a top-notch private cryptocurrency).

PART coin functionalities include but not limited to:

- It is a governance token via on-chain and SMSG voting, as it allows every token holder to participate in the platform related decision making via on-chain voting e.g. Treasury funds allocation, and marketplace governance

- It is a utility token as it is used as a settlement layer on the marketplace to protect the privacy of trades, even when transparent coins like BTC are used for purchases.

- Its a staking token with 8% annual staking reward where 4% goes to decentralized Treasury Fund and 4% staking rewards are distributed to people (nodes). (8% of new coins are generated per year). In addition, all the fees generated by the Particl Platform e.g. transaction, listing and promotion fees, are payed to PART holders. So the more traction on the platform the more cashflow towards the stakers!

The PART coin is a good earner of passive income. It uses Particl version of Proof-of- Stake type of algorithm to achieve distributed consensus on the blockchain. Unlike Proof-of Work for coins such as Bitcoin, the creation of the next block is randomly assigned to some lucky staker and that luck depends on the number of coins staked and the period of time passed since the last time those coins staked or moved. Currently passive income is 4% per year however this is only true if 100% of the total coin supply is being staked. So if only 50% of the total network is up for staking then the reward rate for the year would be 8% plus all the network fees included in the staked blocks. Last but not least, even though the (hot) staking can be done on your old laptop one can also cold stake their coins. That is one can delegate the staking rights to some node that is 24/7 online (e.g. Raspberry Pi) while keeping the private keys for those coins in their hardware wallets. The cold-staking node can not spend nor move those coins and can only stake those.

The marketplace supports multiple-cryptocurrencies allowing everyone to use their favorite currencies for purchases but the trades are always settled in its own native token PART, to protect their privacy and allow private escrow smart contracts, etc.

Why such a low Market Cap then ?

WE ask ourselves the same question, considering the scope of this projects, but there are still a few explanations, and for the sake of transparency, it's worth mentioning a few things:

First, during the crazy 2017 bull cycle, PART ATH reached 40$. Then bear market hit hard, price dropped and the foundation ran out of funds at some point in 2019. Particl decided to use the 996k PART it had from a funding round to pay the developers instead of going to VCs. As you can imagine a chunk of that was sold for food and rent. If one combines the natural non-attractiveness of a price bleed with the addiction of crypto-gamblers to chase hypes/pumps, one could potentially explain why a project like Particl could end up running out of funds.Also, a bug in the coin minting part of the Particl code was used by an attacker to continuously mint new coins since July 2019, and dump them on exchanges, putting a freakin load of sell pressure on the coin until the bug was discovered in January 2021. Approximately 1.7 mil extra coins were minted by the attacker and sold. This corresponds to 15% of the total supply.

For more details see:https://particl.news/roadmap-to-post-inflation-hardfork/

BUT both those issues were resolved:

Regarding the funds issue, The Particl foundation proposed a new funding structure to the community threw a vote back in July 2021. The strategy consists of a new decentralized treasury model that gets automatically funded by the protocol using a portion of the network’s staking rewards.

This funding request suggests bootstrapping the Particl team by claiming 35,250 PART, monthly, from the Treasury Fund for the next 6 months. Once this period expires, the proposal will no longer be valid. The team will then need to publish a new, updated funding request and get it approved by Particl stakeholders to claim funds again. Also Anyone with a project or initiative that benefits Particl can then submit proposals (referred to as funding requests) to request funds from the treasury and get them approved by stakeholders through an on-chain vote. This provides the Particl ecosystem with an adequate PART income source intended to support and enhance the Particl project, reaching back the financial stability they had in 2017.

For more details see:https://particl.news/decentralized-treasury-model-proposal-published/

Quick sum up of the funding proposal:

Circulating supply post-hardfork (estimate): ~11,750,000 PARTProposed yearly inflation rate: 8%Proposed treasury block rewards: 50%Proposed total yearly staking rate (APR for stakers): 4%Proposed yearly treasury rewards (estimates): 470,000 PARTMonthly treasury rewards (averaged from estimates): 39,166 PART

learn more about the funding proposal here:https://particl.news/decentralized-treasury-model-proposal/

Regarding the bug, a hardfork was deployed. Learn more here:https://particl.news/particl-hardfork-scheduled-12-07-21/

With both those issues totally resolved, Particl is finally able to function full speed again, with a very exciting roadmap, including an Atomic Swap DEX, Lightning network expansion ( LNP is already supported, see: https://particl.news/particl-lightning-network-now-available-on-testnet-eb87a5ab65cd/ ), a P2P encrypted chat and lot of more features coming ahead.

You can learn more about the roadmap here:https://particl.io/roadmap/

CONCLUSION

I hope it is now obvious to you all that this is not only the first real DeCom project but also the first DeFi project that allows yield farming based on real economy of the "Amazon for crypto" aka Particl Marketplace. To sum it up here a few key element to remember about Particl:

An audited blockchain protocol based on the latest up to date Bitcoin code with all the perks like, Taproot, Lightning Network, programmability via Script, etc enhanced with privacy features from Monero like CT, RingCT, Stealth Addresses, etc
A platform based on blockchain and E2EE data-exchange protocols were you can build privacy-centric dApps
The flagship dApp is a fully decentralized marketplace that preserves 100% its users privacy, it's censorship-resistant, it has near-zero transaction cost (no commissions/service fees) and, finally its crypto agnostic and users can pay in their favorite currency.
A state of the art two-way escrow system via smart contracts, aka MAD escrow, that protects the trades from any scamming.
Exciting roadmap with a notable item the BasicSwap an atomic swaps based DEX (currently in a closed beta) that is going to be integrated in the Particl Desktop.
A powerful, user friendly but also gorgeous wallet module.
The PART coin that in addition to its awesome privacy features is also used as governance, utility, staking and settlement layer token.
Passive income made easy and very secure thanks to cold staking, either on your own node (a Raspberry Pi 4 more than enough for a full p2p network node) or some cold-staking pool.
The Foundation is back full steam with a healthy funding structure, giving it the ability to push the Particl project forward.
A team of crazy bright and hardworking devs, that kept pushing the project even in the hardest times.
An ultra low cap project considering the scope of the project. Remember ATH was 40$ ! It has the potential of reaching the TOP69 and than TOP42

DYOR and if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. You can also join the Particl channels on Element/Discord/Telegram.

Official Particl Website: https://particl.io/

Particl academy: https://academy.particl.io/

We need Particl private decentralized eCommerce, because centralised surveillance data collection service providers sucks and privacy is a fundamental human right.

Particl 10x potential

What the heck is Particl ?

"To me it's all about freedom." ( CryptoGuard, Head of Communication department at Particl )

Particl is an open source Cyberpunk / Libertarian software project. Its aim is to build tools that protect individual freedom and privacy.

Particl on Coingecko: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/particl

What's behind the hood of Particl ?

The main principle components of the Particl Platform on which the privacy-centric dApps can be built is:

This component can be used in dApps for privacy-preserving financial transaction, on-chain contracts via Script, settlement layer, voting, digital identities, etc

If you are interested in more technical details, take a look at this article explaining those in detail but in a very comprehensive manner:

https://particl.news/particl-explained-private-transactions-44cb120d9cd/

Note: Particl's team was the first one to modify Monero's RingCT algorithm and make it suitable for any codebase. Here is the Quarkslab audit on that:

https://blog.quarkslab.com/security-audit-of-particl-bulletproof-and-mlsag.html

Their Flagship dApp: Particl Marketplace

"Silkroad, Ebay, Amazon on Steroids, without the hassle" ( Humble ahah )

The Particl Coin

PART coin functionalities include but not limited to:

- It is a utility token as it is used as a settlement layer on the marketplace to protect the privacy of trades, even when transparent coins like BTC are used for purchases.

Why such a low Market Cap then ?

WE ask ourselves the same question, considering the scope of this projects, but there are still a few explanations, and for the sake of transparency, it's worth mentioning a few things:

For more details see:https://particl.news/roadmap-to-post-inflation-hardfork/

BUT both those issues were resolved:

For more details see:https://particl.news/decentralized-treasury-model-proposal-published/

Quick sum up of the funding proposal:

learn more about the funding proposal here:https://particl.news/decentralized-treasury-model-proposal/

Regarding the bug, a hardfork was deployed. Learn more here:https://particl.news/particl-hardfork-scheduled-12-07-21/

You can learn more about the roadmap here:https://particl.io/roadmap/

CONCLUSION

An audited blockchain protocol based on the latest up to date Bitcoin code with all the perks like, Taproot, Lightning Network, programmability via Script, etc enhanced with privacy features from Monero like CT, RingCT, Stealth Addresses, etc
A platform based on blockchain and E2EE data-exchange protocols were you can build privacy-centric dApps
The flagship dApp is a fully decentralized marketplace that preserves 100% its users privacy, it's censorship-resistant, it has near-zero transaction cost (no commissions/service fees) and, finally its crypto agnostic and users can pay in their favorite currency.
A state of the art two-way escrow system via smart contracts, aka MAD escrow, that protects the trades from any scamming.
Exciting roadmap with a notable item the BasicSwap an atomic swaps based DEX (currently in a closed beta) that is going to be integrated in the Particl Desktop.
A powerful, user friendly but also gorgeous wallet module.
The PART coin that in addition to its awesome privacy features is also used as governance, utility, staking and settlement layer token.
Passive income made easy and very secure thanks to cold staking, either on your own node (a Raspberry Pi 4 more than enough for a full p2p network node) or some cold-staking pool.
The Foundation is back full steam with a healthy funding structure, giving it the ability to push the Particl project forward.
A team of crazy bright and hardworking devs, that kept pushing the project even in the hardest times.
An ultra low cap project considering the scope of the project. Remember ATH was 40$ ! It has the potential of reaching the TOP69 and than TOP42

DYOR and if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. You can also join the Particl channels on Element/Discord/Telegram.

Official Particl Website: https://particl.io/

Particl academy: https://academy.particl.io/

We need Particl private decentralized eCommerce, because centralised surveillance data collection service providers sucks and privacy is a fundamental human right.

(Part 2) Deep dive into Terra Ecosystem

Hello all,

This is gonna be a long post.

In celebration of Binance listing UST and LUNA breaking 100$, I would like to update my original post nearly half a year ago on the Terra ecosystem. There's a ton of euphoria right now, and so its always good to take a look back at the fundamentals.

A lot has changed since then and by now I'm sure many more people have heard about Terra, maybe even used some of its dapps. For those that are brand new, I recommend reading my original post first. For those wondering if it's too late to get into LUNA, I will present why I think LUNA still has much room to grow. I won't cover every protocol, just the ones I think are most interesting/significant. Still, there's a lot to go through so let's get started.

A quick refresher

Terra is a blockchain developed by TerraForm Labs based on Cosmos SDK (this is important because it allows Terra to connect to all other blockchains in the Cosmos ecosystem, more on this later). Their main products are a suite of algorithmic stablecoins, the most prominent being UST tied to the dollar. UST retains its peg through its relationship with LUNA, where LUNA absorbs the volatility of UST. LUNA is minted when selling UST, and burned when buying UST. In practice, 1$ of LUNA always equals 1$ of UST, even if UST loses its peg. This creates arbitrage opportunities, where if UST is at 1.50$, you can sell 1$ of LUNA for 1.50$ UST and immediately bank 50% profit. This increases supply of UST as people sell LUNA for UST and the peg returns to 1. In reverse, if UST is at .50$, people buy 1$ of LUNA with .50$ UST, which decreases UST supply until the peg returns to 1. Again, videos on this below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HLiZxkbxfY&t=917s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL8tcVHyHMM

Stablecoins are the most important product in all of crypto, no question about it. I honestly can't imagine a time without stablecoins when people took profits into BTC, itself a highly volatile asset. But stablecoins are also not a risk-less product, they are subject to regulators scrutiny and issued by sometimes shady companies (cough...Tether) that may or may not have the funds available to prevent a bank run. A decentralized stablecoin for defi is a no-brainer, and UST is the best of the best currently (DAI is backed by centralized stablecoins and both DAI and MIM are supply constrained, in that they can only be minted with collateral. There are no limits on how much UST can be minted). Protocols on Terra are important to the extent that they drive organic demand for UST. In other words, LUNA can survive and thrive even if all protocols on Terra die out as long as UST is adopted by other blockchains as their main stablecoin. This sets Terra apart from others, its goal is not competing with Solana, Ethereum, Avalanche, or any of the other L1s, its goal is to create the most robust and usable algorithmic stablecoin for all of crypto. A bet on LUNA is a bet on the adoption of UST. Keep this in mind.

This graphic was created in July though at that point we only had Anchor and Mirror running. Now many of these projects have launched or are soon to launch! (though a lot of them are terminated as well)

Launched: Anchor, Mirror, Angel, Valkyrie Protocol, Pylon Protocol, StarTerra, Angel, Talis, HERO, Apollo, Spectrum, Orion Money, Kado, Chai, Loterra, LOOP, Stader, Nexus, Harpoon (now Kujira).

Soon to launch: Mars, Kinetic, Ozone, Suberra, alice, Levana, Astroport, Prism, Spar, White Whale, Neptune, Glow.

I may have missed some so let me know if I did.

Even with all these new protocols, the core of the Terra ecosystem is still Anchor, so let's see what has changed since.

Anchor: Savings and borrowing

Last time I wrote about Anchor it was burning reserves and had just been given a lifeline by TFL. Deposits and borrows were a fraction of what they are today. TVL in the protocol has grown exponentially and is one one of the top 10 defi protocols across all chains. Impressive, considering it operates only on the Terra blockchain whereas many other protocols exist across blockchains. Just recently, Anchor devs announced their intent to make Anchor a cross-chain platform, which would undoubtedly bring in even more capital. On top of that, yield reserves have been growing quite consistently with the addition of bETH and rising value of LUNA. However, with deposits continuing to eclipse borrows, there will eventually come a point when Anchor can no longer sustain its close to 20% interest rate. TFL has been transparent about the fact that the rate cannot be sustained forever, so lowering rates is not cause for panic. Even 15% is far better than any traditional banks or other stablecoin earning dapps/wallets (Celsius 8%, Crypto.com 12%, etc). When this happens, I believe devs should implement a tiered structure of interest rates rewarding those that hold ANC tokens with higher interest. But until then, enjoy your 20% for as long as it lasts :)

Current total deposits/borrow vs. the time of my first post. Interestingly, that little blip in borrows during the May crash at the time felt like a disaster. Today you can barely see the drop.

Mirror: Synthetic assets

24/7 trading of the most popular stocks from anywhere in the world on the blockchain, what's not to like? Unfortunately, Mirror has run into some problems in its time. At one point holding nearly 2b in TVL, Mirror today has only half of that according to DefiLlama. On Mirror itself, the TVL statistic has been removed from the landing page. What happened to Mirror? I believe there were 3 main factors involved: 1. Execution 2. Regulation 3. Full decentralization

Even in its heyday, Mirror listed new assets far too slowly. And when it did, it listed things like mDOT or mBTC, synthetic versions of cryptocurrencies which serves no discernible purpose other than for LPs to farm MIR tokens. Because all anyone was doing was farming MIR, the price of MIR fell and has not been doing much since. Perhaps Mirror could have done better by focusing on more exotic asset classes to list (commodities?) that would attract new capital into the protocol, but it may be too late for that now considering...
regulations. It started when Uniswap delisted synthetic tokens from their DEX frontend, this included all Mirror based tokens. Shortly thereafter, we learned that Do Kwon (founder of TFL) was served (albeit unjustly) a subpoena by the SEC at Mainnet 2021 over Mirror. Hardly surprising that the SEC would be concerned about a synthetic stock market. Although Do pushed back against the SEC by suing them back, this created a lot of FUD regarding Mirror and cast its future into shadows.
Perhaps as a result of these events, TFL relinquished any control of Mirror and turned it into a fully decentralized protocol run 100% by the community. Although decentralization is regarded as the holy grail in crypto, it became quickly apparent that full decentralization too soon without any leadership is not beneficial to anyone. A quick look at Mirror governance tells the story.

Full decentralization without leadership is a mess.

Long story short, I think Mirror is unfortunately a dying protocol (contrary to my original thesis) and there's not much I can see that would save it.

On the bright side, there are plenty of new protocols that have since launched or are launching that will soak up the value of Mirror, let's take a look at some of the most prominent ones.

Launched:

NFTs: NFTs arrived on the Terra blockchain with the same insane excitement as any other blockchain. One of the earliest and most hyped projects was Galactic Punks (punks in space) which minted on Randomearth. Since then tens if not hundreds of additional projects have launched and minted. I won't talk about any of them individually in detail as there are just too many. Feel free to browse Randomearth! My personal favorite is definitely Hero. Just look at Do Kwon's profile picture, how cool is that?

https://preview.redd.it/49kbfgogrg781.png?width=772&format=png&auto=webp&s=8f9291de9e47aaa06d04d92d9b42ca97370aaf62

Pylon/StarTerra: Both of these are launchpads on Terra, and both are pretty unique in terms of launchpads. Pylon was the first and incubated by TFL. It uses a clever system called "Pylon Pools", where users can deposit UST in exchange for tokens from new project launches where the amount is determined based on how long you lock your UST, options being a 3 month/6 month/12 months vesting period. This is a "risk-less" investment in that you recover your original UST amount at the end of the vesting period, and also allows smoother project launches that dampen price volatility. There is also Pylon Swap, where users that stake Pylon's own governance token MINE are allocated a certain amount of new project tokens in a presale (though these are much rarer with the preferred being Pylon Pools. Overall the protocol works as its intended, though there have been criticisms that MINE stakers are not rewarded enough for holding MINE. The team behind Pylon is working on improving benefits for stakers with recently implemented retroactive airdrops for long term stakers. I am excited to see what other innovative launches they come up with in the future.

StarTerra is the first gamified launchpad where stakers are divided into 1 of 3 factions and rewards are allocated differently to the stronger of the factions. To be honest, I have not looked much into this project as their launch was very rocky and received a lot of community distrust. However, I know that since then the team has worked hard to improve their reputation with the community and projects are continuing to partner with StarTerra. Anyone more involved, feel free to comment below on this project!

Loterra: If crypto isn't gambling enough, you're welcome to gamble more with Loterra! Basically a lottery protocol that charges 1UST per ticket and draws every 3 days. There are some cool features though. LOTA stakers are rewarded a portion of every lottery winning including jackpots. There is also the ability to play "lossless" lottery, where it uses Anchor yield to buy recurring tickets whilst keeping your principal amount intact.

Orion Money: One of if not the most anticipated and hyped up project launches on Terra which to be honest up to this point has done little more than disappoint. Orion is a stablecoin savings protocol that leverages the yield of Anchor on other blockchains. It allows deposits of USDC, USDT, BUSD, and others on Ethereum, BSC, and Polygon and pays up to 15% interest by converting and depositing these coins into Anchor. It was said to be the one to open the floodgates to the masses. However, Orion has not seen the expected growth as TVL has stagnated and even fallen over the past few months with only a couple hundred million in TVL, this compared to Anchor's 5 billion in UST deposits (over the same period Anchor deposits increased by several billion). Furthermore, Orion hyped up its airdrop for months and required all recipients to stake to the Orion validator in order to be eligible. Months of staking led to a measly 1% of all tokens being airdropped to loyal stakers. Of course, free money is free money, but it still leaves a sour taste in your mouth. With UST now being available on Binance (listed today), Huobi (listed yesterday), Kucoin, and potentially many more exchanges to come, UST on-ramp will become increasingly easy and there is little reason to not use Anchor directly within Terra. That being said, credit is due for a solid team and an innovative product that unfortunately just has not gained much traction.

Apollo/Spectrum: Both are yield compounders that do exactly what they are supposed to do, there's not much more to say here. Use them to boost your yield on LP pairs within the Terra ecosystem. Spectrum launched a bit under the radar but has since proved its robustness with audits and UI enhancements. Apollo had a pre-launch token mining program which was a great success and one of the fairest launches to date. Kudos to both platforms.

Nexus: Nexus is a yield optimizer leveraging Anchor Earn and Borrow. During the May crash, many accounts borrowing UST on Anchor were liquidated when the price of LUNA used as collateral (called bLUNA) plummeted. New borrowers became hesitant to borrow for fear that they would be liquidated overnight. If there are no borrowers, Anchor Earn cannot sustain its high interest and the protocol would collapse. Nexus aims to help alleviate the problem by providing a system of automated loan managements. You deposit bLUNA into their vault which they use to borrow UST at a preset ratio safe from liquidation and autonomously readjusts itself to maintain the same rate. The borrowed UST is then deposited into Anchor Earn, the interest from borrowing and depositing is used to buy PSI tokens, and the PSI tokens are used to pay interest to those depositing bLUNA into the vault.

Kujira: The Japanese word for whale. Contrary to Nexus protecting from liquidations, Kujira aims to allow everyone the opportunity to benefit from liquidations, whereas before, liquidations would be sniped by bots. Kujira lets you bid for liquidated bAssets (bLUNA, bETH) at a discount to their current value by depositing UST. It works like a charm from what I can tell, though I haven't personally used it (feel kind of bad profiting off people being inadvertently liquidated...but free market and all that, the option is there).

Stader: Probably the most interesting protocol in this list. Stader is a liquid staking and auto-compounding platform that allows you to stake LUNA without any unbonding period (usually 21 day unlock on TerraStation). The base yield from LUNA is compounded automatically while still allowing stakers to receive all the airdrops they would have received if they had just staked LUNA normally. In exchange for staking LUNA on the platform, you are given a token called LUNAX, which is a representation of your stake much like how your UST turns into aUST when you deposit into Anchor. LUNAX will open up a whole new world of degen leverage opportunities that are currently in the works. Check out the video below, I don't think I can explain better than him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0PTNguCP88&t=621s

Angel: A one of a kind charity protocol that is always worth a mention. Angel provides perpetual donations using yield generated from staked LUNA. It runs a validator for staking LUNA, and all interest generated from staked LUNA is given to charities. It is a great concept and definitely worth supporting. To date they have already donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to various charities around the world that you can see on their website.

Other launched projects (that I am not very familiar with) include, TerraFloki, Loop, Valkyrie, and maybe others I've missed. And onto the up-and-coming projects, there are a few highly anticipated ones around the corner.

Coming soon

Astroport: Can you believe Terra has the second highest TVL of any chain without a fully fledged AMM DEX? Neither can I. Astroport, incubated by Delphi Labs (a big investor and supporter of Terra who also helped design Axie Infinity), aims to be Terra's go-to exchange. Currently there is only TerraSwap, which is essentially a re-skinned version of Mirror's backend that leaves a lot of functions to be desired. People who've been in the ecosystem all know the number of times TerraSwap has broken or been hit with stupidly high slippage out of nowhere. Astroport is launching in a few days and is currently in Phase 2 of its "lockdrop" campaign, a 3 step process to ensure the DEX launches with substantial liquidity already provided and rewarding early providers with ASTRO tokens. It is a bit complex but if you're interested it is quite an innovative model and you can read about it here. Phase 2 is ongoing and you still have the opportunity to contribute to the ASTRO liquidity bootstrapping pool for ASTRO rewards if you want to! https://lockdrop.astroport.fi/active-phase Astroport will make the Terra ecosystem even more robust and give users one more reason to never leave again. The DEX launches in 3 days!

Ozone: Terra's native insurance protocol has been in the works for some time. It will allows you to buy insurance in case of UST depeg, smart contract risks, etc. Ozone was funded recently by TFL with ~4 billion UST from burning the LUNA held in their community funds. Last month, Risk Harbor announced they would be in charge of operating Ozone. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/risk-harbor-announces-charge-terras-150000785.html When this project finally launches, it will provide safety assurance for many users, opening up the ecosystem even more to the masses. As a side note, the community pool burn of LUNA resulted in so many fees that will go to pay staking interest that the rewards for staking nearly doubled to around 9-10% per year and will remain consistent for the next few years.

Mars: Another project incubated by Delphi Labs, Mars is a lending and borrowing protocol set to launch early next year. Not much is known about it yet, but it is also highly anticipated. You can watch this video to learn more about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2waIb2_jseg&t=394s

White Whale: Allows retail investors to help maintain UST's peg and profit from arbitrage opportunities by pooling assets.

Levana: Short for Leverage any Asset, basically does what its name suggests. It will allow you to go full degen and buy leveraged assets such as 2x LUNA. What's not to like?

Prism: A very innovative protocol that will split yield-bearing assets such as LUNA into principle and yield components, name pLUNA and yLUNA, where one represents the base token and the other represents the future yield of the base token. This allows you to do things like theoretically borrowing against your future yield revenue. I am very excited to see the full functionality of this protocol once it goes live.

Airdrops

Finally, we can't talk about Terra protocols without talking about airdrops. Almost every protocol launched on Terra has had some form of airdrop to different participants in the ecosystem, particularly LUNA stakers. It is a tradition I expect will continue. Even projects launching on other blockchains have airdropped or will airdrop LUNA stakers, including Comdex and Shade Protocol on Secret Network (all part of overall Cosmos ecosystem).

Full airdrop chart, credit to Crypto_Carlosa on Twitter for making and updating it.

Beyond Terra

Terra now has a whole suite of defi projects driving demand for UST, but UST is not limited to Terra. Since I last wrote about Terra, UST has found its way to Solana, Fantom, Harmony, and linked with other Cosmos blockchains through Cosmos IBC and been listed on Osmosis (the premier DEX for all Cosmos-based blockchains, UST serving as the de-facto stablecoin). As regulation around centralized stablecoins inevitably continues to tighten, I predict defi ecosystems will increasingly adopt UST as their central stablecoin.

UST has also appeared on several centralized exchanges since, the most notable being Binance just this morning (a great Xmas gift for all). It is also listed on Kucoin, Huobi (just yesterday), Coinbase Pro, and others. Though being listed on CEXes is not the premier goal of UST, it definitely drives adoption and lowers barrier of entry for anyone who wants to enter the Terra ecosystem, which is a great thing for all.

Rumor has it (though not really a rumor anymore since Do Kwon confirmed it) that TFL is in talks with the government of Busan to in some way utilize their stablecoins. If it ever comes to fruition, it would represent a killer use-case and validation for decentralized stablecoins used by a government. However, government bureaucracy moves slow so I wouldn't hold my breath.

Spending UST

The big question on everyone's minds is how to even spend all that yield, assuming you aren't a complete degen leveraging everything to the limits. So what options are out there?

Chai: A payment company that launched with Terra in the beginning and uses Terra stablecoins. It can be used in Korea and is actually a huge use-case for Terra that I haven't mentioned but is worth a further look if you are interested.

Crypto.com: My go-to method. Just transfer your LUNA and convert to USDC/USDT (they haven't listed UST yet) and top up your Visa debit card. I don't wanna shill for CDC but fuck it their card is awesome (its metal from second tier up), the benefits are great, and its so easy to use. And just a tip, the Crypto.com app exchange rates are god-awful so its better to sell your LUNA first on Binance or elsewhere and transfer BUSD to CDC over Binance Smart Chain (super low fees), then convert to USDC/USDT to top up (no fees for swapping stablecoins).

Binance: With Binance listing UST and also offering their own debit card, spending UST should be incredibly easy for anyone with a card.

Kado Money: Kado allows you to spend UST directly on many different things, as well as providing a card that can be topped up with UST.

Terra Cards: Gift cards using UST (for US based users only)

Travala: Pay for flights and hotels using UST! Easy as that. They also accepts dozens of other crypto too.

Is it too late to get into LUNA?

No one can predict price movements, but with a long term time horizon, strong assets tend to move up and to the right (just look at a long term chart of any asset you can think of, heck even Bitcoin).

LUNA is now trading around ATH at 100$, a huge milestone for everyone involved. However, now is not the time to be FOMOing in, this is true for any asset at ATH's. The listing on Binance has been rumored for a while and may prove to be a sell the news event, as LUNA is already up more than 100% in the past month leading to this listing. Of course, I would be more than happy to see LUNA continue to make ATHs, but I urge caution and restraint to everyone. DCA in if you must. That being said, I believe LUNA is still undervalued compared to other blockchains. As a ratio of MktCap to TVL, LUNA is priced lower than almost every notable blockchain in the top 10 besides Fantom. And none of the other coins have tokenomics on par with LUNA, a hyper deflationary token as long as UST adoption increases. Again, a bet on Terra and LUNA is a bet on UST and algorithmic decentralized stablecoin winning the stablecoin war.

https://preview.redd.it/1xez8h81tg781.png?width=1856&format=png&auto=webp&s=28cbc13c4071e450511b7d501300bd0458366ab7

So for an answer to the question, I would say it's not too late. However, there may very well be better entry opportunities in the short term. Stay safe out there all you apes.

Any questions or comments are welcome!

TLDR: The defi ecosystem on Terra is thriving. It has come a long long way since the crash in May. UST is being adopted across blockchains and listed on more and more major exchanges both CEX and DEX. As UST is minted, LUNA is burned. More UST = higher value of LUNA, not financial advice.