According to data by Staking Rewards, LUNA jumped to the first position on Thursday, taking out Solana which has held onto the position since November 2021, days after surpassing Ethereum.
Currently, a total of $31.6 billion in LUNA has been staked while Solana, which falls second has $31.4 billion. Ethereum falls third in the lineup with just $24.6 billion staked while Cardano is fourth at $18.6 billion.
Staking is the process of participating in transaction validation after an entity commits its crypto assets to support a blockchain network. In return, the network rewards them with tokens enabling them to earn passive income.
Factors Behind The Success
LUNA’s allure to stakers is however visible on many fronts. First, Staking Rewards already depicts LUNA as having the largest rewards payout among the top 4 cryptocurrencies at 6.9%. This had been definitely a consideration given that nobody wants to stake their assets in a network that pays out low-interest rates.
Secondly, LUNA’s price has been wholesomely attractive especially after gaining by 115% in the past 15 days. This is in contrast to its competitors, that is; Solana, Ethereum, and Cardano which have continuously plummeted in the face of a market-wide drawdown. As of writing, most of these top-tier cryptocurrencies are still down by over 70% while LUNA has already managed to recoup its all-time high.
Furthermore, apart from having many stablecoins including TerraUST, TerraJPY especially considering the growing level of attention on stable coins, the TERRA ecosystem also boasts of one of the most effective token burning mechanisms. As more UST is created, LUNA tokens are automatically burned making the remaining coins more valuable.
As of writing, TerraUSD is the fourth-largest stablecoin globally and sits in the fourteenth position among cryptocurrencies at $14.3 billion, taking out crypto assets such as Shiba Inu, Polygon, and NEAR, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Terra has also gained a lot of traction from NFT enthusiasts and DApp builders given its high-end interoperability features, ease of transactions, and cheap costs. This explains why nearly 3.5 million unique Terra Wallet addresses were created just in 2021, compared to 2020’s 900,000, which translates to roughly a 400% markup in user growth.
As of writing, LUNA is trading at $97 with analysts predicting that this could just be the start of a bigger bullish move as demand for the cryptocurrency continues to soar.
