Terra Blockchain explained in 2 mins




Terra is a Blockchain built for ecommerce. In 2021 its price was multiplied by 70, and the value locked in terra is surging

. So what is Terra? How does it work? And how to start building on it?



Terra was founded in January 2018 by Daniel Shin, and Do Kwon, 2 experienced entrepreneurs. 

The native token of Terra is called Luna:

• 

It has maximum a supply of 1 billion tokens
• It’s the 11th biggest crypto with a market cap of 18 billion dollars. 


Terra is a proof of stake Blockchain, built with the Cosmos SDK.

 There are only 130 validators, which doesn’t make it very decentralized.

What makes Terra special is its ability to issue stablecoins pegged to fiat currencies, like UST which is pegged to to the USD.

 These are algorthmtic stablecoins. 

Every time the price of the stablecoins goes above or below the target, there are arbitrage opportunities exploited by market participants that re-adjust the value of the token. 

It’s important to note that with these stablecoins, the more they are used, the higher the value of the Luna token.



The most famous projects on Terra are:

• Chai, a Korean mobile payments app that is used in TMON, one of the biggest ecommerce platform in Korea.
• Another interesting project is the Anchor Protocol, a staking app to stake from multiple POS Blockchains.

And there is also TerraSwap, a decentralized exchange on Terra. 

Currently, Terra has over 2 million users.  


If you want to build apps on Terra:

• smart contracts are written in Rust
• For testing, you can use the LocalTerra testnet. 


• To interact with smart contracts on Terra from your app, you can use one of the 2 SDKs, one in Javascript and the other one in Python

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• And for users the official wallet of Terra is called Terra Station, available on Mobile (iOS / Android)and as a Chrome extension



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In conclusion, should you pay attention to Terra?



• Algorithmic stablecoins like the ones we have on Terra are very difficult to censor because there is no central issuer.

 This is especially important at a time when regulators become more and more concerned with stablecoins.


• I also really like the traction that Terra has in ecommerce with the Chai project.



So yes, I do think Terra is an important project, especially if you are interested in ecommerce apps on the Blockchain.