Terra Luna Classic (LUNC)

History, technology and key data — no opinions, no advice

Historical price evolution of Terra Luna Classic

Daily historical data. Updated automatically.

Terra Luna Classic was born in January 2018 when Do Kwon, a Stanford-educated engineer and former Microsoft and Apple employee, co-founded Terraform Labs in Seoul alongside Daniel Shin, founder of Ticket Monster (TMON), who brought the vision of e-commerce payments. In August of the same year, the company raised $32 million in a private sale of LUNA with investors such as Binance Labs, Polychain Capital, Huobi Capital, OKEx and Upbit, distributing the 385 million LUNA tokens issued amongst investors (26%), employees (20%), Terra Alliance (20%) and stability reserves (20%). In February and March 2019, Terraform Labs conducted an additional ICO selling LUNA at $0.80 per token and raising a further $10 million.

The Columbus mainnet of the Terra blockchain was launched in April 2019 alongside the publication of its whitepaper, implementing a Proof-of-Stake consensus based on Tendermint from the Cosmos SDK. In June 2019, Chai was launched, a South Korean mobile payments application that processed e-commerce transactions on Terra using TerraKRW (KRT), the ecosystem's first stablecoin. A month later, Terraform Labs announced the official alliance with Chai and the expansion of the Terra Alliance, a consortium of e-commerce platforms from 10 countries with 45 million users and $25 billion in gross merchandise value.

In September 2020, Terraform Labs launched TerraUSD (UST), an algorithmic stablecoin pegged to the dollar in collaboration with the Bittrex exchange, which reached a market capitalisation of $180 million by the end of the year. In December, Mirror Protocol was launched, a synthetic assets platform that replicated share prices using UST as collateral. The year 2021 marked significant expansion: in January, Terraform Labs raised $25 million from Galaxy Digital, Coinbase Ventures and Pantera Capital; in March, Anchor Protocol was launched with a fixed yield of 19.45% annually on UST deposits and raised $20 million; and in July, a $150 million ecosystem fund was established. In September 2021, Columbus-5 was launched, the largest upgrade to that point, which introduced the burning of 100% of LUNA seigniorage when minting UST and integrated the Cosmos IBC protocol, whilst LUNA accumulated a revaluation of 5,200% for the year.

In January 2022, the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) was created in Singapore to accumulate Bitcoin reserves intended to defend UST's peg, reaching approximately 80,394 BTC valued at $2.4 billion before the collapse. In February, Terra signed a $38.15 million five-year sponsorship agreement with MLB's Washington Nationals. LUNA reached its all-time high of $119.18 in April 2022, with a market capitalisation exceeding $40 billion. However, on 7th May 2022, the collapse began when investors withdrew more than $2 billion from the Anchor protocol and sold UST massively, causing it to fall to $0.985. Between 9th and 13th May, a death spiral occurred: the algorithm minted LUNA massively to restore UST's peg, shooting the supply from 343 million to 6.53 trillion tokens in days, whilst UST collapsed to approximately $0.10 and LUNA fell from $62 to fractions of a cent. Approximately $45 billion in market capitalisation was destroyed in less than a week.

On 25th May 2022, the community approved proposal 1623 Terra Ecosystem Revival Plan 2, creating a new Terra 2.0 blockchain with a new LUNA token, whilst the original chain became known as Terra Classic with its token renamed LUNC. On 28th May, the Phoenix-1 mainnet of Terra 2.0 was launched with 1 billion new LUNA distributed via airdrop. During 2022 and 2023, multiple legal developments unfolded: the SEC initiated an investigation in June 2022, Interpol issued a red notice against Do Kwon in September, and in February 2023 the SEC filed civil fraud charges. Do Kwon was arrested in Montenegro in March 2023 with forged documents. In parallel, the community implemented token burning mechanisms: a 1.2% burn tax in September 2022, reduced to 0.2% in January 2023, and raised to 0.5% in May 2023, a rate that remains in effect in 2026.

Legal developments continued in 2024: Terraform Labs declared bankruptcy in January, a jury unanimously found Do Kwon and Terraform Labs liable for fraud in April, and in June they agreed to pay $4.47 billion to the SEC whilst the company announced its dissolution and transfer of control to the community. In August 2024, Terraform Labs executed its final update and formally ceased operations. Do Kwon was extradited to the United States on 31st December 2024, pleaded guilty in August 2025 agreeing to forfeit $19 million, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison on 11th December 2025. The community has continued developing the blockchain with technical updates in February 2025 (v3.4.0), August 2025 (v3.5.0 which reactivated the Market Module without minting), and May 2026 (v4.0.1). Until April 2026, approximately 444 billion LUNC have been burnt (6.8% of the post-collapse supply), with Terraform Labs responsible for burning 249 billion (60.7% of the total) and Binance 72.9 billion (17.8%).

Terra Luna Classic (LUNC) is the native token of the Terra Classic blockchain, the original chain of the Terra ecosystem that maintains its operability following the collapse of May 2022. The blockchain functions through a delegated Proof-of-Stake consensus system compatible with the Cosmos ecosystem, where more than 130 active validators process transactions and secure the network. The token presents a distinctive characteristic derived from its history: it has a circulating supply of approximately 5.47 trillion units, resulting from the hyperinflation that was triggered during the original collapse when the algorithm minted massive quantities of LUNA to attempt to maintain the peg of the UST stablecoin, expanding the supply from 343 million to 6.53 trillion tokens within a matter of days.

Since the collapse, Terra Classic operates exclusively as a decentralised community project without institutional backing, as Terraform Labs is in bankruptcy and Do Kwon is serving his sentence in the United States. The community manages the chain through an on-chain governance system, having implemented a token burning mechanism as a measure to gradually reduce the circulating supply: each transaction on the blockchain applies a 0.5% fee that is specifically allocated to burn LUNC. This process has resulted in the elimination of approximately 444 billion tokens until April 2026, representing nearly 6.8% of the total supply following the collapse. The chain currently maintains no connection whatsoever with stablecoins or use cases related to algorithmic stable assets.

Data verified against external sources. Some values may have changed since the last update.