Overview

Fueled by a passionate community and deep developer talent pool, the Terra blockchain is fully community-owned and built to enable the next generation of Web3 products and services [1].

Since the Terra ecosystem crash around half an year ago, the price of LUNA experimented a lot of changes. The main one is the fork of its main token to LUNA2. Since then, the price of LUNA2 went going down from its higher price during the first days after the relaunch.

However, beginning in the wee hours of Monday, January 9 (ET), the price of LUNA skyrocketed, from $1.37 to a high of nearly $2 before settling down at roughly $1.60.

Why did the price jump so suddenly on Monday night? Will prices remain at, or above, current marks in the coming weeks or will it return to at or near $1? Why?

Methodology

The main objective of this dashboard is to identify some of the major reasons for this recent upshot in price, and try to understand why its hapenning. To do that, I have compared several metrics between LUNA and its competitors like OSMO and MATIC, as well as ATOM. The metrics studied have been:

• Prices trends over the past month
• Daily changes over the past month
• Relationship between LUNA changes and cryptomarket changes
• Some causes for LUNA’s struggle.
• Study of any potential causes or any indicators that could help us predict whether/when it could recover?

LUNA price vs others

As seen, from the past month, a total of 28 times the average market down more than 1%. Take into account that we have considered cryptomarket as average metrics of ATOM, MATIC, OSMO, and LUNA tokens because in my opinion they are representative tokens of LUNA competitors. During these bad days when market down, the average changed in prices were -3.72%. However, in the case of LUNA price, the average percentage change during those days were -4.1. In fact, if we take into account how many times LUNA price decreased when cryptomarket falls more than 1% were 26. Then, in only 2 times when the cryptomarket goes down more than 1%, LUNA price stayed safe.

Finally, I have computed how many times LUNA prices outperformed the cryptomarket when it went down. From the 28 times, 14 days LUNA price outperformed cryptomarket, being 50% of times when LUNA price had a better performance than the whole cryptomarket.

To conclude this first approach, I have compared the evolution of LUNA price against the whole cryptomarket in order to see if it follows similar trends or at some points the LUNA price developed different sideways. In the first image, we can see the LUNA price changes over the past month in comparison to the other top crypto tokens such as ATOM, OSMO and MATIC. As it can be seen, when the other tokens goes up or down, the LUNA price do the same but in a more pronounced manner. However, it seems that the sudden up and drop action price follows similar market trends. We can see how in fact, ATOM experimented a major percentage change in January 9th.

If we take a look at the second image, we can see how there is a strong positive correlation between the LUNA price and the average cryptomarket price in terms of daily changes. It can be clearly seen that when the percentage is negative, the average market change is negative as well. On the other hand, when the LUNA price change is positive the avreage whole cryptomarket goes up as well. In both cases, when the percentage is higher, the same occurs for the whole cryptomarket.

Indicator 1: swapping activity

The first possible indicator selected is the swaps. When the price of an asset change, it is the major of the times related to its netflow on swaps. For this reason, I have selected this first indicator.

If we take a look at the first chart, it can be seen how the netflow of swaps for LUNA has been so positive on some selected days while for the rest seems to be similar. If we take this trend and compare it against the LUNA price, we can see how they are clearly not correlated due to follows so different trends.

Indicator 2: transfer’s activity

The second possible indicator selected is the transfers. When the price of an asset change, it is commonly realted to transfers activity. For this reason, I have selected this first indicator.

If we take a look at the first chart, it can be seen how the volume of LUNA in transfers has fluctuates a lot over the past days and weeks, reaching the highest numbers in 9th and 14th of January, when the price registered some sudden ups and drops. If we take this trend and compare it against the LUNA price, we can see how they are strongly positive correlated due to follows indentical trends.

Looking at the relationship between volume transferred and price movements, we can see a strong positive correlation, saying as that when the volume transferred is higher, the LUNA price seems to go up.

Key insights

• It can be seen how the LUNA and other Cosmos tokens prices followed similar trends.
• During these bad days when market down, the average changed in prices were -3.72%. However, in the case of LUNA price, the average percentage change during those days were -4.1. The percentage are more similar when market go up, being 2.74% for the whole market and 2.72 in the case of LUNA.
• If we take into account how many times LUNA price decreased when cryptomarket falls more than 1% were 26. Then, in only 2 times when the cryptomarket goes down more than 1%, LUNA price stayed safe. From the 31 times when market was positive, LUNA goes up 28 times while only 3 times LUNA prices stayed unsafe.
• From the 28 bad times, 14 days LUNA price outperformed cryptomarket, being 50% of times when LUNA price had a better performance than the whole cryptomarket. From the 31 bad times, LUNA outperforms the market 11 times, represnting 35.5% of the times.
• There is a strong positive correlation between the LUNA price and the average cryptomarket price in terms of daily changes. It can be clearly seen that when the percentage is negative, the average market change is negative as well and on the other way around, suggesting that the LUNA price sudden changes were followed by a whole Cosmos price changes.
• The netflow of swaps for LUNA has been so steady over the past days and weeks, but in some specific days the amount was so positive. If we take this trend and compare it against the LUNA price, we can see how they are clearly not correlated due to follows so different trends.
• The volume of LUNA in transfers has fluctuates a lot over the past days and weeks, reaching the highest numbers between 9th and 14th of January, when the LUNA price experimented those changes. If we take this trend and compare it against the LUNA price, we can see how they are strongly positive correlated due to follows identical trends. In this case, we can see how the mainly volume was received by OKX and Astroport, registering almost 1.5M LUNA received in total for these two entities. Similar behavior occurs in both cases when the amount transferred was higher. It may be the cause of the LUNA price changes!

As a result, here we can see the difference between OSMO price performance and LUNA price performance over the past month. It can be seen how the LUNA and OSMO prices followed similar trends. However, it seems that since January 9th, when the sudden up and drop succeeded, the price of LUNA started to expermiment different price change than OSMO.

The second chart represents the daily change in price of LUNA price against OSMO price. When OSMO decreases the LUNA prices decreased in a higher % and on the other way around.

Regarding positive days, a total of 31 times the average market up more than 1%. Again, taking into account that we have considered cryptomarket as average metrics of ATOM, MATIC, OSMO, and LUNA tokens because in my opinion they are representative tokens of LUNA competitors. During these good days when market up, the average changed in prices were 2.74%. So similar inthe case of LUNA price, which was 2.72. In fact, if we take into account how many times LUNA price increased when cryptomarket goes up more than 1% were 23. Then, in only 2 times when the cryptomarket goes up more than 1%, LUNA price stayed unsafe.

Finally, I have computed how many times LUNA prices outperformed the cryptomarket when it went up. From the 31 times, 11 days LUNA price outperformed cryptomarket, being 35.5% of times when LUNA price had a better performance than the whole cryptomarket.

In this final chart, we can see where the LUNA amounts transferred went during those days.

In this case, we can see how the mainly volume was received by OKX and Astroport, registering almost 1.5M LUNA received in total for these two entities. Similar behavior occurs in both cases when the amount transferred was higher.