Terra

Terra was founded in January 2018 by Daniel Shin and Do Kwon, two entrepreneurs from South Korea. Terra is a blockchain protocol specially designed for empowering global payments system with the help of stablecoins. The company under which Terra functions is named Terraform Labs.

Terra has a native token called LUNA which is used to stabilize the prices of stablecoins in Terra’s protocol. Luna holders can also participate in governance of the protocols Terra holders can also submit proposals with small initial deposits which are later approved or rejected by Terra community through a democratic process.

Terra runs on Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. Miners stake LUNA and also get rewarded in LUNA for adding blocks to Terra’s blockchain. The rewards which miners receive are in the form of transaction fees and seigniorage. Seigniorage is equal to the value of the newly minted currency – the cost of issuance. On the Terra ecosystem, seigniorage is the value of new minted crypto because the cost of issuance is zero. The protocol also charges 0.1%-1% tax on each transaction which are also paid to the validators but used to stabilize the token prices.

Terra has formed Terra Alliance which is a group of 15 (and growing) e-commerce and payment platforms. Terra has built an app called CHAI which is already used by more than 3 million users completing around 100,000 transactions daily. South Korea’s 15 leading banks are already partnered with Terran and support CHAI app. As of November 2020 Terra has processed $330 million worth of payments.