Terra’s LUNA shed nearly a quarter of its value in the past 24 hours after a proposed revival plan revealed by founder Do Kwon, data shows.
LUNA rose to as much as $0.00022 on Monday evening as plans to fork the current Terra blockchain went viral on social media. It then shed as much as 22% in early Asian hours to trade at just over $0.00017 at writing time. Some $2.1 billion worth of the tokens were traded in the past 24 hours alone.
The token is down more than 99% since April highs of nearly $120. The drop came as excess LUNA was put into circulation last week to prevent the collapse of terraUSD (UST), a Terra ecosystem stablecoin pegged to U.S. dollars, as reported.
LUNA gained, then slumped, amid proposals to fork the current Terra blockchain. (TradingView)
Last night, Kwon proposed forking Terra to a new chain that would entirely cut out its failed UST product and instead focus on decentralized finance (DeFi) applications building on Terra.
The current chain would continue as Terra “Classic,” while holders of LUNA on the “Classic” chain would receive token airdrop on the new chain’s token under the plan. Although still a proposal, if a majority of network validators and the community were to approve the plan, the new network could be launched as soon as May 27, Kwon said.
Sentiment remains mixed for the proposal among the crypto community.
Some said they would support the new chain and anticipated the airdrop to prior holders. Others suggested the plan was unfair, as it could vastly benefit investors who purchased massive amounts of LUNA at a few pennies more than those who purchased the tokens when they were valued above $100. To combat this, however, Kwon proposed holding two snapshots – one prior to UST’s collapse, and one after – and airdropping equivalent amounts of new tokens.
Plans to compensate relatively ‘small’ holders of UST and LUNA affected in last week’s collapse were also underway, Kwon claimed.