There's been a lot of talk these past few days about the next steps for the Terra community following the dual implosion of its UST and LUNA projects. In fact, with LUNA now being labelled a meme coin, there's a growing tribe on Twitter, ready to rival the armies of SHIB and DOGE supporters. This group, the LUNAtics, are baying at the moon, believing that the project can pump again. Will it? Who knows, right? I'm skeptical, but it's left to be seen. Time alone will tell.  

It seems though that at the moment, major players haven't completely abandoned the Terra project altogether. One such player is Binance's CEO, Changpeng Zhao.  

Over the weekend, there was a theory that Binance had a financial interest as an investor in UST. This theory was, of course, discredited by Zhao, however his language was not altogether dismissive as, while he sought to clarify facts around Binance's actual involvement, he also left a bit of room for hope in his suggestions and firm requests for further information.  

"These past weeks have proven to be a watershed moment for the crypto industry," Zhao tweeted earlier today (May 15th). "We have witnessed the rapid decline of a major project, which sent ripples across the industry, but also a new found resiliency in the market that did not exist during the last market downswing."  

Clarifying that while Binance Labs did initially invest US$3 million in Terra, it did not acquire nor invest in UST, nor did it participate in the second round of Luna's fund raising, Zhao stated, "The last few days, we tried hard to support the Terra community. In my tweets, I am simply pointing out the potential issues from my understanding. Minting, forking, don’t create value. Buying back, burning does, but requires funds. Funds that the project team may not have."  

This statement directly addresses, in my view, the proposal put forward by Terra creator, Do Kwon who, on Friday, proposed forking the chain.  

On the issue of the project team possibly lacking funding, Zhao added, "In this regard, I would like to see more transparency from them. Much more! Including specific on-chain transactions (txids) of all the funds. Relying on 3rd party analysis is not sufficient or accurate. This is the first thing that should have happened."  

This again appears to be in response to Do Kwon's tweet on May 13th asking for the community's patience.      

Zhao continued, "I am not always right, but my perspective is: Failures can/will happen. But when they do, transparency, speedy communication and owning responsibility to the community is extremely important.  I am just hoping that the project teams can rise from the ashes and rebuild in a proper and sensible way."  

LUNA continues to be available for spot trading on Binance and Kucoin, though some exchanges including Coinbase and OKX have moved to discontinue trades while FTX is discontinuing LUNA perpetual swaps.  

FTX Chairman Sam Bankman-Fried put in his two cents on the project in a Twitter thread over the weekend. In response to a CoinDesk editorial comparing Do Kwon to Theranos founder, Elizabeth Holmes, Bankman-Fried stated, "Not all bad things are the same thing."  

Noting that UST and LUNA were bad projects that ended badly, he pointed out that unlike Holmes, Terra's team was transparent about its business model. Describing Terra as a case of mass enthusiasm, excitement, marketing, and memes, Bankman-Fried, in a nutshell, said that proper due diligence from investors would have brought them to the same conclusion, i.e., that the project was going to fail.  

Still, though Bankman-Fried isn't going so far as to call the Terra projects anything other than a bad model, other industry players weren't as generous. On Friday, in response to Do Kwon's proposal, Dogecoin founder, Billy Markus took a swipe.  

And so, friends, here we are.  

It is not unheard of for meme projects to witness incredible pumps. This has been proven by both DOGE and SHIB in the past couple years. And so, it's not impossible for LUNA or UST to do the same. In fact, both tokens were turning some numbers over the weekend, particularly on Friday and Saturday.

And though LUNA has seen a significant decline, falling more than 16% in the past 24 hours and trading at 0.00027 at the time of this article, LUNA's price is still up 28091.6% from its all time low two days ago.  

I think if the team can come forward with some transparency, and if an enormous buyback and burn project is executed, if it gets a nod of support from a credible or major industry player, a short term pump is possible. (This is not financial advice.) Regaining the trust of investors for long term support is another matter altogether, and I don't know about all that.  

Do Kwon's past arrogance has won him few fans, and while it may have been tolerated when LUNA was turning numbers,  now that he presides over what appears to be a second failed project, he finds that he has very little social capital to draw on to rally a following of die hard supporters.    

So, what's next for Terra? Is there even going to be a next? Who knows? What I can say for certain though is that as we continue this post-crash analysis, the week ahead will definitely be an interesting one.  

Have a great Sunday, my friends. Until the next one, please remember to be safe. We will connect again soon.