Background Summary: What is Terra?
The Terra Ecosystem is one of the most exciting integrated DeFi spaces out there. It has its own blockchain called Terra that is built on Cosmos’ SDK and like Solana, it can take advantage of its IBC
Its native coin is LUNA and it’s principal native stablecoin is UST. The relationship between LUNA-UST drives the entire ecosystem, where LUNA is minted and burnt to keep the value of UST pegged to the US Dollar.
The entire network is based on the relationship between LUNA-UST pairing, in which the value of the UST (algorithmic stablecoin) is pegged to the dollar by burning and minting LUNA accordingly by arbitrage traders.
Unlike other projects like Polkadot and Cardano, Terra is already fully operational and there are already a number of robust, fully-audited, beautifully designed dApps operating on them, with Anchor and Mirror being at its core.
Terra Investments
Mirror ($MIR) – v2 available.
Allows exposure to synthetic assets (mAssets) like Amazon, Google and Tesla stocks as well as synthetic DOT and ETH. Liquidity Pools of these mAssets are included, and both short and long farms are available. It is even possible to mint mAssets using aUST from Anchor.
Sigma ($SIG) – Coming Soon
Allows for minting and trading of collaterized options like equities and LUNA options.
Levana ($LVN) – Coming Soon, Fall 2021
Enables Leverage trading via minting of leveraged assets, starting with LUNA2x tokens. Roadmap includes Leveraged Index Tokens, Perpetual Swaps, Crosschain Perps, etc. Created by Delphi Labs, 50% of tokens will be allocated to community and treasury, with the promise of a community-controlled DAO.
Prism ($PRISM) - Litepaper released 10-Oct
Allows splitting Yield Bearing Assets into their yield and principal components (YT & PT) allowing the management of these independently. These can then be staked, put into LPs, bought, sold, or used as collateral for borrow/lend positions.
Nebula ($NEB) - Soon on Pylon Gateway
Crypto ETF Protocol, which re-balances the weights of its different components dynamically according to different financial data (e.g. social media influence, price momentum). Will be able to use assets from other blockchains in future thanks to the IBC.
e.g. The “Next DOGE” Cluster: Assets: UST, mDOGE, MEME, LEASH, ERC-20
Spar ($SPAR) - Coming Soon
For hedge fund managers, it is an On-chain Asset Management Platform which allow for the creation of specific portfolios, letting others invest in a fund for a fee.
Terra Money Market
Anchor ($ANC) - Battle-tested
The core of Terra DeFi, Anchor is a lending and borrowing platform that gives out a ~20% stable yield on UST stablecoin deposits by over-collaterizing liquid staking positions in bLUNA and bETH. Many dApps like Pylon, Nexus, Orion, Loterra and even Mirror are built to use the stable yields of Anchor to create extra wealth.
Orion ($ORION) - Coming Soon
Earns ~13% APY on ERC-20 stablecoin deposits like wUST, DAI, USDT, USDC, BUSD by auto-converting it to UST and depositing on Anchor while 3rd party insurance protects gainz.
Mars ($MARS) - Coming Soon
Allows entrepreneurs to borrow money without depositing a collateral by presenting a project in the form of a Smart Contract. The Martian Council evaluates the project and gives out the loan. It is like the TV show ‘Dragon’s Den’, but in this case the Council are the MARS token holders, and the Smart Contract means there is no deviation from the plan.
Kujira (formerly Harpoon Protocol) - Coming Soon
Liquidation Protocol which lets community members bid on at-risk collateral.
Lighthouse DeFi (formerly Harpoon Protocol) - Coming Soon
Liquidation Protocol which allows for the bidding of at-risk collateral by depositing UST, providing pool depositors to earn passive income over debt liquidations. In this way, not only the whales can get involved in this sport!.
Launchpads
Pylon ($MINE) - Pylon Gateway available.
Uses Anchor’s ~20% stable yield for automatic loss-less subscription payments like Netflix, Spotify, Patreon. A UST- deposit on Pylon will be auto-deposited into Anchor and the yields generated pay for the subscriptions without capital loss. It also uses the same locked UST deposit mechanism to farm new tokens in the Pylon Gateway Launchpad, which for me is the most interesting feature. $MINE buy backs are also quite strong.
StarTerra ($STT) - Launching now.
Gamefied Launchpad, which let’s users farm for new projects’ tokens by undertaking gamified marketing tasks, allowing new projects to get noticed while users have fun.
Decentralized Exchanges (AMM DEXs)
TerraSwap - Almost Legacy
Original Terra DEX, but likely to be replaced by the new DEXs available after the Columbus-5 upgrade. UI is not great and some sham tokens sometimes appear.
Loop ($LOOP) - DEX Launching now
AMM DEX which pairs Terra Assets to their LOOP equivalent for exchanging, in a similar way to Thorchain for those familiar with that. It is also a decentralized content platform like Medium which rewards writers and readers in $LOOPR tokens.
Astroport - Coming Soon
AMM DEX which will have regular LPs, stable asset LPs (e.g. bLUNA-LUNA, bETH-ETH) and Liquidity Bootstrapping Pools which are launchpad-style LPs.
Yield Optimizing Vaults
ApolloDAO ($APOLLO) - Available, Farming.
Yield Aggregator which auto-compounds gains from LPs. It is designed for Decentralized Hedge Funds. At the moment, investments in Vaults can be done solely with UST and part of the gains are paid in $APOLLO.
Spectrum ($SPEC) - Passed Security Audit.
Yield Optimizer with auto-compounding and/or auto-staking options for assets farmed on the LPs in the vault. It automates complex strategies on Mirror and is slowly adding more LPs to get the best APYs. $Psi and $LOOP farms coming soon. Also, not allows for single-asset deposits.
Nexus ($Psi) - Launching very soon!
Now this one is special, Nexus can manage Anchor Protocol borrowed position LTVs (bLUNA, bETH) to avoid liquidation. It also has a UST vault that lets you do complex short/long farming strategies on Mirror. The nAsset-$Psi LP will also provide the best yield farming opportunity for LUNA and ETH in DeFi.
White whale ($WHALE) - Coming Soon
Allows the community to access arbitrage opportunities that normally only Crypto Whales can access by funding a communal UST vault. Bots will look for LUNA-UST arbitrage opportunities, and when non are available it will use Anchor Protocol to make a ~20% yield. It will improve the stability of the entire Terra ecosystem, and new Vaults for other arbitrage opportunities will slowly be released, even on other blockchains!!
Sandclock - Coming Soon
Uses Anchor 20% stable yields to make loss-less donations, payments, endowments, etc. It helps us spend the yields from our farms.
Neptune ($NEPT) - Coming Soon
Similar to Nexus, it is also based on Anchor and allows for automated Yield Farming which helps avoid liquidations on borrowed bAsset positions. $NEPT tokens will be airdropped to users staking LUNA on the "neptune_finance" node.
Infrastructure
Void ($VOID) - Coming Soon
Anonymous transactions within Terra, which will let Terra asset deposits (e.g. Luna, UST) into another Terra wallet anonymously by using specially designed Void smart contracts. There will be a 0.25% fee on all transactions unless 1,000 VOID are staked in the Governance DAO pools.
Tsunami - Coming Soon
Defi data market and storage solution.
Stader Labs - Coming Soon
Automated $LUNA staking platform which optimizes delegation of staking assets to auto-compound gains, promote decentralization and collect Airdrops. Yields can be then automatically sent to other platforms: e.g. gaming.
Insurance
Ozone Insurance - Coming Soon
Protects your assets invested in the Terra Ecosystem from technical failure risks. This is arguably the most important development arriving in Columbus-5 as it will add an extra layer of security to Anchor deposits. Finally, Terra's aim is to go mainstream by being robust and user friendly, Anchor being the main example of this, it could produce higher yields but doesn't to increase robustness.
Lottery
LoTerra ($LOTA) - Available
Branded as Terra’s Casino, it currently lets users buy lottery tickets at the price us 1 $UST per ticket and automatically collects the winnings. In future, it will use Anchor Protocol to make a loss-less Lottery fund so that you are playing with the Yields produced from Anchor (20%).
Charity
Pluto’s Pot
Gamefied charitable raffle.
Angel
Terra-based protocol for creating perpetual charity endowments by using the yields from Anchor to automatically give without losing the original capital (uses Anchor stable yields, of course...).
Debit/Credit Cards
There are a number of projects which will allow LUNAtics to use their UST in the material world with seamless FIAT integration. These debit cards are funded with $UST and use Anchor Protocol to attract users by offering stable yields >10% which is unheard of in Legacy Trad Fi.
Kash
$UST card connected to your Terra Wallet. Currently only available in EU countries.
Alice
$UST debit card
Kado
Let’s you redeem $UST for everyday goods, electronics and more.
Terra.cards
Let’s you buy Amazon Giftcards using $UST.
Nuclear Options
Armageddon Protocol (Unconfirmed)
Would turn off Terraform Labs and let the entire Terra blockchain run fully decentralized. This is a possibility if centralization of the protocol ever starts threatening its existence, and perhaps if the SEC or other entities start coming after Terra.
Conclusion
There are so many new terra dApps coming out (some more exciting than others, I must admit!) that to be perfectly honest I got tired and left the list as is (its already quite comprehensive!). However, it is exciting to see the explosion of use-cases for this robust eco-system, and as a LUNAtic watching Terra going from strength to strength is a pleasure to see.
Disclaimer:
Non of this content is or should be considered financial or investment advise. I am no financial advisor, I am merely a content writer using freely available data and information to produce the best OC I can come up with for informative and entertainment purposes.
Also, I replicate my content on multiple platforms to make it visible to a larger audience. This article can also be found on my Loop account here.
Also, kudos to FishMarketAcademy for inspiring me to this write up.
