June 28th, 2022

How Significant Is Instagram’s NFT Launch? What are the things you should look out for?

Earlier this month the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, announced that he will start beta testing NFT functions with a small group of users in the US. Mosseri also confirmed there will be no fees for posting or sharing NFTs on Instagram. Any NFT digital collectibles shared in Instagram will appear as tagged photos or profiles, and when clicked, you will be able to view creator and artwork details. Instagram supports the display of NFTs created on the Ethereum and Polygon as well as on Flow and Solana in the future. It will also support the use of third-party encrypted wallets such as Rainbow, MetaMask and Trust Wallet, with support for more crypto wallets planned in the future.

Source: see Tweet from May 9, 2002

Creators and developers participating in the beta can now share the NFTs they make or buy. Users can share these NFTs in their feeds, stories, or messages. According to Mosseri, only a few people currently have access to Instagram’s NFT beta test, which is designed to be able to gain important data feedback from the initial test and learn how to best integrate the buying and selling of these digital collectibles. While more NFT-related features will be rolled out in the future I believe that Instagram’s NFT rollout may be part of Instagram’s parent company Meta’s metaverse project, involving a deeper interaction in the future. As Mosseri tweeted a few days after the NFT announcement: “Power is shifting. Over the next 10 years, we are going to see a shift in power away from platforms and towards creators. There’s a lot we all can and should do to lean into that shift.”

What is the purpose of Instagram’s move?

I believe that the creator economy is very important for Instagram in the current market. While many creators in social media already have a variety of different ways to make money, many of them are unpredictable and dependent on the platform they use. Therefore, there is a strong case to believe that Instagram will be able to attract creators to form a community. “I want to acknowledge upfront that NFTs and blockchain technologies are all about distributing trust and distributing power,” Mosseri admitted. “But Instagram is fundamentally a centralized platform, so there’s a tension there. One of the reasons why we’re starting small is we want to make sure that we can learn from the community. We want to make sure that we work out how to embrace those tenets of distributed trust and distributed power, despite the fact that we are, yes, a centralized platform.”

In the metaverse, people will buy, use NFTs for a variety of purposes, and share their experiences. Meta decided to start with NFTs because NFTs are an important link in the metaverse economy. I believe that since Facebook changed its name to Meta, they have been exploring a wider range of web3 technologies, and aim that through using these technologies, creation costs will be reduced, and the experience would be better. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that similar functionality will soon be available on Facebook and possibly other Meta apps in the future. Zuckerberg added that Meta will work on augmented reality NFTs, or 3D NFTs.

In my view, Instagram’s foray into NFTs has been planned for quite a while. In 2021, Instagram hosted Creators Week, an invite-only virtual summit that Instagram describes in its invitations as a “private event for NFT creators.” It’s also worth noting that Instagram’s NFT beta program launched not long after Twitter enabled NFT profile pictures for its premium users. That said, Instagram and Twitter are not the only big tech companies entering the NFT space. Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, said it may start using web3 technologies including NFTs in the near future to help YouTube creators monetize their work: “We’re always focused on expanding the YouTube ecosystem to help creators capitalize on emerging technologies, including things like NFTs, while continuing to strengthen and enhance the experiences creators and fans have on YouTube,” she confirmed in a letter published in January.

In the light of the developments, industry experts are all optimistic of Instagram’s moves on NFT. “I think Instagram can help users to understand NFT better. They are also indirectly introducing new users to the cryptocurrency space. Overall, this is a positive move and I hope more companies can do the same.” Jenny Zheng, Business Development lead at Bybit NFT Marketplace commented.

Anndy Lian, thought leader and Chairman at BigONE exchange said: “While Instagram isn’t the first social app to experiment with NFTs, the sheer size of its one billion (monthly active) user base gives it its biggest reach versus its competitors, which means that the addition of web3 technology it could potentially engage a whole new group of users. And with Meta’s Facebook expected to add similar features in the near future, Meta will have a huge NFT presence in the social media space. I know Instagram can create more sparks in the NFT space. I am so looking forward.”

It is also worth noting that as the value of NFTs has fallen significantly since last year, so the number of users interested in the feature may be lower than expected. As a striking example of this slowdown, on May 4, the Coinbase NFT marketplace opened, but since then only just over four thousand people have bought an NFT. So it remains to be seen whether Instagram and Facebook can turn things around and rekindle significant user enthusiasm for NFTs.

Original Source: https://www.benzinga.com/22/06/27870761/how-significant-is-instagrams-nft-launch-what-are-the-things-you-should-look-out-for

Anndy Lian

Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.

Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.

An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.

www.anndy.com

j j j

June 17th, 2022

What Terra’s Collapse Shows About Accurate Blockchain Data

With the start of the bear market in crypto coinciding with the Terra crash the value of understanding market metrics is even more apparent. What’s long dogged analytics is the question of how accurate on-chain data is for assessing the overall picture, with leading analytics company Chainalysis noting the issue of fake exchange volumes back in 2019 for example. At the same time more recent a study of the drivers for crypto market movements from the World Bank highlighted that total off-chain volumes appeared to be significantly larger than on-chain transactions. Some industry estimates indicate a roughly 6:1 off-chain to on-chain volume ratio. The total off-chain volume in the first half of 2021 was approximately $16 trillion, compared to $2.8 trillion on-chain volume. This means the report does not include purchases of crypto-assets with fiat currency, sales of crypto-assets for fiat currency and swaps between crypto-assets.

But is this lack of precise crypto data such much of a problem, apart from the researchers at the World Bank, surely on-chain data is sufficient to provide investors and traders what they need to know? Certainly, a good case in point is what the use of on-chain data to understand the Terra collapse, employed by Nansen’s research team. Through analysis of open data on the blockchain they discovered that a small number of players identified vulnerabilities early intro the UST de-peg, particularly in terms of the shallow liquidity of the Curve pools securing Terra to other stablecoins. In simple terms, the data showed these players withdrew UST funds from Anchor to Terra, bridged these funds from Terra to Ethereum, swapped large amounts of UST to other stablecoins in Curves liquidity pools, and during the de-pegging arbitraged inefficiencies between pricing sources from Curve to centralized exchanges. As a result, Nansen’s team were able to disprove the popular ‘attacker’ thesis supported by Terra themselves up until the present with the launch of Luna V2. And instead, it concluded in more objective terms that the collapse “could instead have resulted from the investment decisions of several well-funded entities”.

The question of the Bitcoin reserves is explored in a recent Forbes piece on the rise of off-chain metrics. What is clear from Glassnode is that of the 80,394 accumulated by Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) was emptied between May 9 and May 10, “with 52,189 BTC were sent to Gemini via over-the-counter desks, which were then deployed elsewhere, including Binance, and 28,205 BTC were transferred to Binance directly.” While this may sound like an aberration bear in mind that tracking Bitcoin as held on exchanges has been decline for some time, with these internal market trades already on the rise. As touched on in the World Bank report the rise of Bitcoin ETFs and ETPs could account for an additional 7% of circulating supply. From this perspective Bitcoin’s 17.3% decline in April was partly down to ETPs and ETFs and funds selling 15,000 Bitcoin. In other words, it marks the rise of trading activity off exchanges which makes understanding the range of data from on-chain to off-chain more important going forward. In addition, as shown in the World Bank report, the attitude the big institutional players take in the global Bitcoin market are far less sensitive to local intra-country economic factors. “For example, they may provide trading, exchange, market making, and custody services and may have diversified operations across countries which may make them less susceptible to local macro-economic conditions in individual countries,” the report found, whilst also admitting that “country factors also matter little for crypto volumes associated with smaller transactions. We leave deeper analysis to future research.”

Consider the thesis put forward by Arthur Hayes, co-founder of 100x, that the collapse of Terra was down to VCs that looked to cash out their Luna positions with “minimal market impact.” Because of the public nature of the blockchain key investors cashing out their Luna positions would be easily detected. However, due to the design of the protocol, which allowed in a 1:1 peg for Luna holders to redeem their holdings for the stablecoin UST, in principle with no impact on that peg and the value of Luna (which at its peak was $118). Therefore, rather than going through the more public channel of exchanges and instead using Over-The-Counter (OTC) involving direct trading between two parties the argument is that after converting Luan to UST the VCs then swapped for other stablecoins with no market impact: “My boy estimates that close to $5 billion of these flows took place. The start to the TerraUSD meltdown occurred when the peg broke slightly on Curve. This happened as too much UST was supplied relative to other stables like USDT and USDC. Once the peg begins to break slightly, and confidence in a quick reversion wanes, the negative convexity of the algo stable coin design takes over and creates an unstoppable downward force,” added Hayes in detailing the process of the $50 billion ‘death spiral’.

Back to on-chain metrics for another view of the current rash in the price of Bitcoin, bearing in mind the importance of also considering the off chain data such as wider macro-economic trends (the Fed’s moves on interest rates being an obvious example). Raghu Yarlagadda, CEO of FalconX, said regarding the value of on chain metrics, “the on chain analysis is still very relevant – it’s like if Apple were to report its quarterly earnings, however, instead of waiting 90 days to receive this information, you get it in real-time.” Indeed, backing up the pivot back to the focus on tried and tested in chain metrics for tracking the value of Bitcoin is the observation that some $53K made their way into exchanges on May 9, the single-highest inflow since November 2017. The main source? The Bitcoin from the LFG, which led to it crashing to its lowest level since late 2020 at just over $25K.

I believed that in the current crypto market it was worth investors and traders considering both on-chain and off-chain data. “The case of Terra’s crash shows it pays to see what the bigger players such as VCs are up to, as well as the day to day on chain price of Bitcoin. It’s also important for all exchanges to be honest about their own off-chain data in the form of trading volumes, to help rebuild trust in the crypto markets right now. That’s going to be particularly important in the near future as regulators are emboldened by the Terra crash to move forward with new restrictions.” Lian added that a controversial May 6 Reuters report using outdated information, in detailing alleged criminal transactions amounting to $2.35 billion by Binance, further underlined the value of accurate data to all stakeholders within the crypto industry.’

Original Source: https://www.securities.io/what-terras-collapse-shows-about-accurate-blockchain-data/

Anndy Lian

www.anndy.com

j j j

May 29th, 2022

What is Terra Luna 2.0? Everything you need to know about Terra’s fork

The Terra Luna community has approved of the revival plan that would see a hard fork from the failed token and the creation of a new blockchain Terra 2.0.

Earlier this month, LUNA crash made headlines, sending shockwaves through the wider cryptocurrency space, with bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH) crumbling and cryptocurrency trading platform Binance (BNB) forced to suspend trading.

The luna coin is part of a dual-token system along with Terra’s US dollar-pegged stablecoin Terra USD (UST).

Terra USD is an algorithmic stablecoin, which means that its peg to the US dollar is ensured by algorithms and game theory, using a series of smart contracts to keep the price at $1.

When UST unpegged from the USD on 9 May, UST redemptions massively inflated LUNA supply, driving the price down by 99%. The UST crash happened as the algorithms could not keep up, forcing the Luna Foundation Guard and its governance team to sell their bitcoin reserves to save the stablecoin.

This caused BTC to drop to $27,000 and wiped out nearly $400bn of the total cryptocurrency market value.

What is LUNA 2.0?

In a new plan proposed by Kwon, the Terra blockchain would undergo a hard fork, with the launch of Terra 2.0 and the old luna tokens being renamed into luna classic (LUNC). Kwon’s revival plan has passed with 65.5% majority approval.

The snapshot for Terra 2.0 given by Kwon gives an idea of how the blockchain would work and states that the new Terra will be created without the algorithmic stablecoin.

The Terra Builders Alliance have provided technical details on integration, decentralised applications (dApps) migration, and a guide to rebranding the original Terra chain as ‘Terra Classic’.

The tokens will be renamed as Luna Classic (LUNC), and while the original Cosmos chain will continue to operate, the option to mint or burn coins will be disabled.

The new blockchain is due to arrive on 28 May, according to Terra’s twitter. “The community has been working around the clock to coordinate the new chain’s launch,” the project said.

Terra Station, Terra Finder, the project’s block explorer, and Terra Observer, the project’s feeder for dApps, will all have full functionality when the network goes live, according to Terra’s team.

How will LUNA Classic work?

What is Terra Luna Classic (LUNC)? It’s simply a new token that will replace failed LUNA coins. In the latest LUNA 2.0 news, the new tokens are being airdropped to LUNA and UST holders on 28 May, according to Terra’s Twitter.

There are predetermined groups that are receiving airdrops of the new LUNA coins:

Community pool will receive 30% of the token distribution, with 10% earmarked for developers.
Pre-crash LUNA holders will receive 35% of the new tokens.
Pre-crash UST holders will receive 10% of the new tokens.
Post-crash LUNA holders will receive 10% of the new tokens, including staking derivatives – 30% of the tokens will be unlocked at genesis, with the remaining 70% vested over two years, with a six-month cliff.
Post-crash UST holders will receive 15% of the tokens – 30% of those are unlocked at genesis, and 70% will be vested over two years, with a six-month cliff.

Terra will airdrop the new LUNC tokens to all LUNA holders with at least 10,000 of luna tokens or less “to ensure that small luna holders have similar initial liquidity profiles”.

The governance will also remove Terraform Labs’ (TFL) wallet from the whitelist for the airdrop, to make Terra a fully community-owned chain. Additionally, a large portion of the token will be allocated to Terra dApp developers to make the ecosystem successful in the long run and provide network security.

Terra LUNA recovery will depend on how its developers and governance team manage to prepare core public infrastructure, wallets, GEN file, execute the launch, provide oversight on essential development programs and act as a steering committee for the new chain.

Meanwhile, Terra ecosystem has millions of users globally, and the Terra Station allows developers from across the world to work together on multiple projects from decentralised finance (DeFi) to fungible labour markets, enabling them to use state-of-the-art infrastructure and gain community experience.

LUNA Classic forecast

“No matter what the price is and how the fork is going to turn out, the more immediate thing to do is to stabilise the projects in their current ecosystem.”

by Anndy Lian, chairman at BigONE Exchange

The future of Terra (LUNA) depends on its successful rebrand and launch. With the Terra community’s strong support to give LUNA a rebirth, the team is on the recovery plan. Popular Terra Classic projects, Astroport, Nebula, Prism, RandomEarth along with several others, will be migrating to the new Terra.

As of 27 May, the LUNA classic price stands at $0.0001313, according to CoinMarketCap’s Terra Classic market page. However, as Terra Chain will be rebranded as Terra Classic the price data would migrate to Terra V2 CMC page.

As the new LUNC coin is at the very early stage, it is extremely difficult to forecast its further direction. As of 27 May, an algorithm-based forecasting service Price Prediction suggested that the new coin to average at $0.00017152 in 2022, rising to an average of $0.00052103 in 2025, and averaging at $0.003 by 2030.

However, these predictions are based on algorithms and do not consider the current scenario. A rebranding attempt to save the crypto and regain the community’s trust will depend on how the launch plays out and if the Terra team can succeed in the airdrop mission as promised.

Anndy Lian, chairman of the Netherlands-registered crypto trading platform BigONE Exchange said that Terra community is remaining strong, yet he’s uncertain for how long.

“They are willing to make changes on their own. Some of them even go to the extent of sending their own wallet to the burn address to help reduce the supply. This is the kind of commitment you see on the ground,” he told Capital.com in a note.

“But such moves by the community are temporary and will not last long given that the core issues are not resolved. They have to clearly state how the funds were being managed, who was and is involved in the whole process.”

Lian believes that in order for Terra 2.0 forking to succeed, the project needs trust and transparency, which would ensure an upbeat outlook and speedy growth.

“Many people out in the market are just concerned about the price. The truth is no matter what the price is and how the fork is going to turn out, the more immediate thing to do is to stabilise the projects in their current ecosystem, let them migrate their dApps and apps to the new blockchain so that they do not have any downtime,” Lian added.

Note that price predictions can be wrong and shouldn’t be used as a substitute to your own research. You should always conduct your own due diligence. Keep in mind that cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile, and never invest or trade money you cannot afford to lose.

Original Source: https://capital.com/terra-luna-2-0