In a recent announcement, Terra’s official Twitter handle stated that the Terra blockchain has officially halted at a block height of 7603700.
Terraform Labs halted the Terra blockchain to hedge it against a possible attack, according to their statement. The halting is a follow-up of the sudden fall in the value of LUNA, which plummeted below 2 cents.
“Terra validators have decided to halt the Terra chain to prevent governance attacks following severe LUNA inflation and a significantly reduced cost of attack.”
Terra Twitter account
News about Terra halting was spreading
The rumor follows pictures purportedly from their Discord stating that the chain would be terminated and restarted with staking disabled. Staking would be disabled in order to avoid an attack. It’s unclear whether this is the official strategy.
Over the weekend, the UST stablecoin, which is designed to preserve price parity with the US dollar, lost its peg but rebounded temporarily. It dropped to as low as 27 cents on Monday but has yet to regain its peg with the dollar.
The LUNA governance token, which is supposed to function as a buffer to keep UST at $1, has also lost value and plummeted uncontrollably. The news was out on the street as liquid staking protocol had Lido warned Terra of a much possible network attack.
The entire mayhem not only caused the price to drop but also made thousands of investors lose their life savings and also left themselves vulnerable.
Currently economic security of Terra had been briefly worth about $180m, with over $200m worth of bETH on Terra. It’s theoretically possible to halt the network and freeze these assets in an elaborate economic attack.
Lido Finance on Twitter
Even though the team is working on measures to regain traction, investors should be cautious as the market is highly volatile, and anything can happen.