Terra, LOOP And Black Holes

If you're a consumer of science fiction, you already know that "Terra" is often used as the name for our planet Earth. It's from the Latin word "terra", and Roman languages derive their word for Earth from it, like the Spanish "La Tierra", Italian "La Terra" and French "La Terre."

We're all crypto-heads here though, so what's important for us, is that Terra is a programmable blockchain, providing a next generation payment network with fiat-pegged stablecoins. Did you notice that I didn't say "US Dollar," but "fiat"? That's because Terra offers not only UST (TerraUSD), but many more international fiat currencies as native stablecoins, thus far including TerraGBP, TerraEUR and even the International Monetary Fund's TerraSDR, among others. This arsenal of different stablecoins is also one of the primary reasons why the community platform has been moved to the Terra blockchain, as you can hear in the interview with Tom Norwood at the end of this article. Now here's another neat detail: the Terra blockchain is powered by its own native coin called LUNA. Yes, orbiting the Earth is the Moon, so what better name for Terra's native coin than LUNA, which is the Latin word for moon.

Now, how did I land on the Terra blockchain? As you all know, I publish only on blockchain-powered social platforms, starting on Steemit, later expanding to Hive and most recently on the new Trybe network. Well, it's not so new anymore; it doesn't even exist anymore. Trybe was originally built on the EOS blockchain, but it had some problems, some of which were related to the EOS ecosystem. For me as an end-user those problems translated into long loading times, being logged off when trying to publish articles and so on. So I was pleasantly surprised when Tom Norwood, the creator of Trybe, announced that the platform would get a big overhaul, and that the site would be transferred onto the new Terra blockchain. And what's more, the Trybe tokens I and many other loyal contributors had gathered, would be exchanged for the new LOOPR tokens. That wasn't all though; LOOPR tokens would qualify for LOOP airdrops as well! Christmas truly has arrived early this year ;-) With all this, Trybe became LOOP, and Trybe holders became LOOPR holders, all eligible for their first LOOP airdrop, which occurred one week ago.

Now I must say, and this is part of the reason why I'm writing this, that this whole process was handled excellently. The whole transformation from Trybe to LOOP was announced early and we as end-users were adequately informed of what we had to do to make the transition as smooth as possible. The only thing we had to do was to create a TerraStation wallet and enter the address in the "Settings" section of our profile on the new loop.markets website. For those reading this on Steemit or Hive, you can find me here. And I would also encourage you to start publishing there as well, if you think you can add something of value, and only if you write about cryptocurrency related topics. I recommend becoming a Looper because of my personal positive experiences there; Tom Norwood and his team have created a community that's worthy of the designation "community" and they have shown to really care about all the contributors, writers, commenters, readers and so on.

If you decide to join the Looper community, it's good to know that LOOPR is the token you'll be earning. LOOPR holders can then stake these tokens on their LOOP DEX (Decentralized EXchange) to earn LOOP tokens. As a writer, someone who uses words every day all day to communicate ideas, hopes, dreams, it doesn't escape me how the naming conventions here keep falling back to the same themes. You know, with the moon "looping" around the Earth... I love that! Although it could be that "loop" is used because it's the reverse of "pool," which is THE key feature of every decentralized exchange. The success of this new community is further expressed in the amount of tokens that have already been added to the loop.markets DEX, with 4.38M UST value locked in there already for the LOOP-UST and LOOPR-UST trading pairs.

The community spirit on the LOOP platform is further emphasized by their dedication to loyal contributors as well as newcomers, and is excellently signaled with the use of the word "fairdrop" as opposed to a simple "airdrop." Again, as a writer I revel in these clever word-plays! It suffices to say that both veterans and newbies were given equal opportunity to participate and the event was accessible to the entire community; this is another reason why I feel confident inviting everyone to at least take a look at participating in this young and growing community.

A few words of caution to close this report on my personal experiences with the whole Trybe to Terra-LOOP transformation. First and foremost: this is not financial advice. I'm just some bloke on the internet who's aware that cryptocurrencies are the future money and finance, but I'm an expert at exactly nothing. Secondly, to be able to do anything on the LOOP DEX, you'll have to deposit a few TerraUSD (UST) on there to pay for transaction-fees. This was the only small hurdle for me to overcome, as I had to look up how I could accomplish this. I couldn't just swap LOOPR tokens into UST straight away, because there was no UST present on my account. Keep in mind that what follows are just the steps I personally took in this journey; there are surely better, more efficient and cheaper routes to take, so do your own research! Here's the steps to take as I was able to figure out, and keep in mind that step 1 wasn't necessary for me because I already participated in the Trybe community:

1. Make an account on on the LOOP community website by following this link (this is my personal referral link, which I prefer you use, but it's not mandatory; you can also simply go to www.loop.markets),
2. Start publishing, reading and commenting to earn LOOPR,
3. Create a TerraStation wallet by downloading it here, or create an online version here. I downloaded the Windows app first, and then connected the Chrome browser extension; you need to use the browser-extension to easily interact with the LOOP DEX as well as many other features yet to come on the Terra platform, like token sales, NFT's and so on,
4. After connecting the browser-extension to your Terra wallet address, you can visit the LOOP DEX here and connect your Terra wallet address,
5. To start adding to the pools and swap tokens, you need some UST. For that I used MetaMask and UniSwap to buy some UST using Ethereum, and here's the first caution: ETH gas-fees are still incredibly high! So, keep a sharp eye on the costs here, and if there's a better, cheaper way to do this, please leave a comment so that others can benefit,
6. You can't directly transfer UST to your Terra wallet, so you'll have to use a cross-chain bridge. I used TerraBridge; simply connect your MetaMask wallet, select Ethereum in the "From" column on the left and "Terra" in the "To" column on the right, choose UST in the "Asset" field and the amount, and finally insert your Terra wallet address, and you're good to go. You're now ready to use the LOOP DEX, and are able to participate in any future fairdrops if you have some LOOPR on the community website.

Give the transfer from MetaMask to TerraStation some time; it'll take a few minutes. And if you go to check the transaction link, like I did, don't panic when you see that your tokens are being transferred to a "Black Hole" address; this is normal and has to do with tokens being burned as part of the blockchain mechanisms. I did panic, but after searching the "Black Hole" thing on Google, I found this Reddit post, explaining there's no worries here ;-) And a few minutes later the UST was visible in my TerraStation wallet, and I could claim the LOOP fairdrop.

Thank you, dear reader, for hanging on with me until the end; this post has become longer than I expected, but that's because I'm genuinely very pleased with the developments on the former Trybe platform. I hope some of this enthusiasm transfers to you as well, and that it encourages you to participate on the LOOP community platform. Even if you're not a writer, you can participate and earn by reading, rating and commenting on articles; just make sure your comments are worthwhile and rates are fair. Also keep in mind that Terra and LOOP are rapidly growing, giving ample opportunities to earn tokens by staking, providing liquidity, participating in airdrops, yield farming, creating and trading NFT's; it's an entire decentralized finance (DeFi) platform with fast transactions and low transaction fees.

Well, I hope this little personal trip through the Terraverse, complete with looping moons and black holes, has inspired some of you to launch your own rocket-ship and land on Terra! To dive a little deeper, watch the included videos; the first is an in-depth interview with a co-founder of Terra, the second is a short tutorial on how to use TerraBridge, as visuals are always better than just words, and below is linked another in-depth interview, this one with the man who started this whole journey, Tom Norwood.

Thanks so much for visiting my blog and reading my posts dear reader, I appreciate that a lot :-) If you like my content, please consider leaving a comment, upvote or resteem. I'll be back here tomorrow and sincerely hope you'll join me. Until then, stay safe, stay healthy!