Terraform Labs’ Luna has surpassed the popular dogecoin, avalanche, and shiba inu coin to become one of the top ten cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. Even though the coin fell about 6% on Monday as part of a broader crypto sell-off. It still gained about 25% in the last seven days, giving it a market cap of about $25 billion, according to CoinMarketCap data.
The evaluation as compared to leading cryptocurrency, ‘Bitcoin’ is still far behind. Despite a 30% drop from its November highs, the original digital token is still worth close to $1 trillion. According to the data, dogecoin and shiba inu, which had previously competed for positions in the top ten cryptocurrencies, were ranked 11 and 13, respectively, with “ethereum killer” avalanche ranked 12th.
The Terra blockchain, which was launched in 2018, makes use of stablecoins to run its payments system. It also uses the Luna token to stabilise the price of the protocol’s algorithmically-backed TerraUSD stablecoin, UST. Terra is gaining ground there in the decentralised finance world, aka DeFi, by offering faster transactions and lower fees.
DeFi investors are looking for ethereum alternatives. According to Fortune, this is one of the reasons why coins like avalanche, solana, and luna have been on the rise. A report by CoinGecko states, Luna has risen more than 12,000% in a year. With the majority of the gains occurring in the last four months alone. According to the data, Avalanche has risen 2,400% in a year, while Solana, the fifth-largest cryptocurrency, has risen 9,500%. Luna was worth $300 million at the start of the year. The coin experienced its first bull run in July when its market cap increased to $2.6 billion. Luna’s price has increased by 900 percent in the last six months alone.