Kwon Proposes Forking Terra, Nixing UST Stablecoin in ‘Revival Plan 2’

“$UST peg failure is Terra’s DAO hack moment,” the Terraform Labs CEO wrote, “a chance to rise up anew from the ashes.”

Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon is out with a new “Revival Plan” to save the Terra ecosystem in the wake of last week’s stable coin meltdown. His new slogan: “Terra is more than UST.”

Calling the $40 billion implosion “a chance to rise up anew from the ashes,” Kwon said that “the ecosystem and its community are worth preserving” as he pitched the second take revival plan as a “living document.”

In Monday’s post and an accompanying Twitter thread, Kwon proposed forking Terra into a new chain sans terra USD (UST), the algorithmic stable coin whose depegging crushed the entire ecosystem, the LUNA token included. Holders of LUNA on the “Classic” chain (the existing chain) would receive an airdrop of the new chain’s token under the plan. The old chain will continue to operate using the newly renamed luna classic (LUNC) token.

Kwon said the new chain will be “fully community owned,” and Terraform Labs – Kwon’s company and the creators of Terra – will not be eligible to receive funds in the initial token disbursement.

The plan will go into effect if it’s voted through by token holders. Kwon promised voting would begin on May 18. According to his proposed timeline, the new network launch could come as soon as May 27.

What happened

In what may have marked the largest token collapse in crypto history, Terra’s $40 billion stable coin juggernaut crashed last week. Terra’s UST stable coin, which is supposed to stay “pegged” to the price of the dollar, plummeted below 10 cents. LUNA, which UST’s “algorithm” uses to help prop up the stable coin’s dollar peg, dropped from $80 to below 1 cent amid the turmoil.

In a tweet Monday, the Luna Foundation Guard, stewards of Terra’s vast bitcoin (BTC) reserves, explained that it sold off virtually all of its over-2 billion dollars worth of bitcoin in an ultimately failed attempt to defend UST’s peg. The announcement dashed any hope that Terra might be able to use the reserves to substantially compensate investors.

Monday’s announcement from Kwon followed an original “Revival Plan” he proposed last week. The earlier plan, while light on specifics, also proposed handing ownership of Terra over to its community.

Compared to the earlier plan, the newer one places a larger percentage of the forked chain’s initial token distribution (25% versus 10%) into a “Community Pool” responsible for funding future development. The new plan also gives 5% of the tokens to “essential developers” – a group not mentioned in the original proposal.

The vast majority of new LUNA tokens would go to those who lost billions of dollars from last week’s collapse. Following a vesting schedule, smaller holders would get their full allocations faster than whales, or large holders, who might have to wait up to five years. Terraform Labs would get nothing under the deal.

This will be a living document to coordinate the fork with the community. Details are subject to change.

Terraform Labs will put this proposal up for a governance vote on 5/18 Asia time. If passed, it will coordinate the network fork pursuant to the “Timeline” below.

Special thanks to everyone that submitted great ideas on Agora and the “Rebuilding Terra” group.

Motivation

Terra is more than $UST.

While UST has been the central narrative of Terra’s growth story over the last year, the distribution of UST has led to the development of one of the strongest developer ecosystems in crypto.

The Terra ecosystem and its community are worth preserving.

  • Terra’s app ecosystem contains hundreds of developers working on everything from defi to fungible labor markets, state-of-the-art infrastructure and community experience
  • Terra Station has a large install base, with million+ users across the world
  • Although distressed, strong brand recognition and a name that almost everyone in the world will have heard about

$UST peg failure is Terra’s DAO hack moment – a chance to rise up anew from the ashes.

Summary

  • Fork the Terra chain into a new chain without the algorithmic stablecoin. The old chain to be called Terra Classic (token Luna Classic – LUNC), and the new chain to be called Terra (token Luna – LUNA)
  • Luna to be airdropped across Luna Classic stakers, Luna Classic holders, residual UST holders, and essential app developers of Terra Classic.
  • TFL’s wallet (terra1dp0taj85ruc299rkdvzp4z5pfg6z6swaed74e6) will be removed in the whitelist for the airdrop, making Terra a fully community owned chain
  • Allocate a large portion of the token distribution in 1) providing emergency runway for existing Terra dapp developers 2) align interest of devs with the long term success of the ecosystem
  • Network security to be incentivized with token inflation. Target staking rewards of 7% p.a.

Essential app developer program

There are essential apps that must exist in any web3 ecosystem to be viable:

  • Infrastructure – Setten
  • Dex – Astroport, Loop, Terraswap
  • Explorer – Finder, terrascope
  • Payments / onramp – Kado, Alice
  • Wallet – Station, Leap, Falcon
  • Lending market – Mars, Edge
  • Analytics – Coinhall, Flipside
  • Staking derivative – Stader, Lido, STEAK, PRISM
  • Launchpad – StarTerra
  • Bridges – Axelar, Wormhole
  • Stablecoins – USDT / USDC bridged over from Wormhole
  • NFT exchange – Randomearth, Knowhere, Oneplanet, Luart, Talis
  • Insurance – Risk Harbor
  • Defi strategies – Nexus, Apollo, Aperture
  • Games – UNOPND etc

… and others.

Essential app developers committing to launch on Terra will receive:

  1. Emergency allocation (1% of total supply) immediately after network launch to provide for runway while they build out product. Commit to returning funds if product has not been launched in 1 year
  2. Alignment allocation (4% of total supply) to be vested to dev teams that ship product and show traction. Allocation to be determined by governance, ruleset to be debated by community.

Essential app developers looking to join should signal public support for the fork on Twitter and social channels, and coordinate with the community multisig

Token Distribution

1,000,000,000 Luna tokens

  • 25% – Community pool, controlled by staked governance
  • 1% – Essential Developers emergency allocation. No lockup
  • 4% – Essential developers (1 year cliff, 4 year vesting thereafter, granted after launch traction)
  • 35% – All bonded / unbonded Luna, minus TFL at “Pre-attack” snapshot
    • For wallets with < 1M Luna: 1 year cliff, 2 year vesting thereafter
    • For wallets with > 1M Luna: 1 year cliff, 4 year vesting thereafter
  • 10% – Luna holders (staking derivatives included) at the “Launch” snapshot – 10% unlocked at genesis, 90% vested over 2 years thereafter
  • 25% – UST holders at the “Launch” snapshot – 10% unlocked at genesis, rest vested over 2 years thereafter

All tokens locked or vesting is staked at genesis, and must be unbonded to become liquid.

Technical details

  • “Pre-attack” snapshot to be taken at at Terra Classic block 7544914 (2022.05.07 23:00:04+08:00)
  • “Launch” snapshot to be taken at Terra Classic block 7790000 (2022.05.27 03:59:51+08:00)
  • Chain upgrade to commence in a few hours after the Launch snapshot
  • Snapshots can change depending on development readiness
  • Vesting all vesting block by block
  • Terra Core to be forked with the oracletreasurymarket modules removed – no UST
  • Luna eligibility includes Luna, bonded Luna, unbonding Luna, and staking derivatives

Roles & responsibilities

  • TFL/Kernel Labs (previously maintained mantle, station, finder, Terra Core) to prepare core public infrastructure, wallets, genfile, release binary for the launch
  • Validators (to volunteer) to declare gentx and coordinate launch shortly after the launch snapshot
  • Community leaders looking to provide oversight over the essential dev program should form a multisig to oversee the essential dev allocation & act as a steering committee for the new chain

Timeline

  • 05/17 – Announcement out
  • 05/18 – Governance proposal out
  • 05/21 – Terra Core release is cut, network launch instructions made available for validators
  • 05/25 – Essential app developer registration completed
  • 05/27 – Genesis file created from final launch snapshot
  • 5/27 ~ Network launch

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