New Terra Blockchain Launch Expected Saturday, With LUNA Airdrop to Follow

Terra’s new blockchain will be launched on Saturday followed by an airdrop of new LUNA tokens to users as part of a broader plan to revive the ecosystem, developers confirmed Friday.

“The community has been working around the clock to coordinate the new chain’s launch,” Terra developers said in a tweet on Friday morning. “Subject to potential change, we expect Terra to go live on May 28th, 2022 at around 06:00 AM UTC.”

A snapshot of the new blockchain, currently called "Terra 2.0," took place earlier this week after the conclusion of a vote among network validators with a 65% approval rate.

Holders of LUNA and terraUSD (UST), a U.S.-dollar pegged stablecoin, are eligible to receive new LUNA tokens in a vested manner based on their previous holdings. This would, in theory, allow old holders to regain some of their lost investment value while incentivizing usage of the new blockchain.

For example, wallets with more than 1 million LUNA or UST prior to UST’s depegging from the U.S. dollar would have to wait more than a year before receiving any tokens, with a four-year vesting period thereafter. New tokens will be automatically distributed to existing user wallets.

Popular applications from the current blockchain – which will continue as "Terra Classic" after the launch of Terra 2.0 – are expected to migrate to the new blockchain.

Separately, a governance vote on Terra’s proposal 1747 to burn 1.388 billion UST passed on Thursday. The move reduced UST’s supply by some 11% of its current supply of 11.28 billion.

Terra’s UST tokens saw a bank run earlier this month that caused prices of the tokens to fall to as low as 7 cents. This caused a loss of trust in the Terra ecosystem among investors, with prices of LUNA tokens falling nearly 100% and Terra-based decentralized finance (DeFi) applications losing upward of $28 billion in locked value.