UST Grows 55x to Become the 4th Largest Stablecoin, Terra DeFi Ecosystem Amasses $18B in Assets

As predicted by Terra CEO Do Kwon earlier this year, the stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) has reached 10 billion supply before 2021 has been over.

“UST marketcap is now $10B, the first decentralized stablecoin to achieve this milestone. There is no more doubt in the product market fit of decentralized money in decentralized economies,” commented Kwon on Monday.

Terra is an algorithmically-governed stablecoin pegged to the US dollar by its native asset, LUNA. The stablecoin started the year just under $181 million, representing a growth of over 55x.

With this, UST has become the fourth largest stablecoin after USDT (78 bln), USDC (42 bln), and BUSD (14.6 bln). After UST comes DAI with a supply of 9.3 bln. The total stablecoin supply has now surpassed 150 billion, up from just $29 bln at the beginning of the year.

Meanwhile, Terra's native asset LUNA has been leading the market gains, hitting a new all-time high of $103.35 on Monday. As of writing, the $32.7 billion market cap cryptocurrency has been trading at $90.7, up 13,750% this year.

This growth of UST and LUNA can also be seen in the entire Terra ecosystem as the total value locked (TVL) in it climbed past $21 billion, up from just $53 mln at the beginning of 2021. Since yesterday, the TVL in its decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem has declined some; it is still keeping above $18 bln.

Terra now comes in second place after Ethereum’s $157 bln, with BSC coming in third with $16.9 bln assets. Meanwhile, in 2021, the total DeFi ecosystem added $235 billion to amass $253 bln worth of assets.

With a dominance of 46.89%, money market project Anchor is leading Terra’s DeFi TVL, followed by LIDO and Astroport.

A couple of months back, in an interview, Kwon had said that more than 160 projects would be launched on the South Korean blockchain project by early next year.