Was Terra Luna Death Spiral a Result of an Inside Job?

New research suggests one of the active wallets (dubbed 'Wallet A') may be linked to Terra Labs or the Luna Guard Foundation (LFG). Prior blockchain analytics study highlighted the 7 main wallets that contributed to the collapse of Terra Luna.

Jump Crypto released a postmortem analysis, detailing what occurred that led to UST de-pegging from the US Dollar. Other blockchain analytics platform analysis, suggest that Celsius may have been involved, is also available.

The most interesting part of the postmortem of Terra Luna is surrounding the mysterious 'Wallet A'.

Wallet A Actions

"At 21:44 GMT, Terraform Labs (TFL) withdrew $150 million in UST liquidity. This made the Curve pool relatively balanced, but much smaller.

"At 21:57, a relatively-inactive account ('Wallet A') swapped $85 million UST for USDC in this pool. (This was the largest swap transaction in that particular Curve pool ever.) Such an action pushed the Curve pool out of balance again.

"Moreover, Wallet A had transferred $108 million in UST to Binance earlier in the day, and these transfers coincided with elevated trading volumes at Binance and the worsening liquidity at Curve."

Jump Crypto noted that they are unable to determine who is behind 'Wallet A'. Although, new research made some discoveries on 'Wallet A'.

Wallet A

A study by Uppsala Security attempts to unravel who may be behind the wallet that caused severe damage to Terra Luna ecosystem.

Wallet A address on etherscan

The $85 million UST that was swapped for USDC was transferred to Coinbase. As the security team is unable to determine who is behind the wallet at Coinbase, the source of capital was investigated.

Wallet A received all of its capital from Terra Mainnet using the Wormhole:

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The wallet was identified and labeled as 'Wallet A (T)'.

source: stake id

The team continued investigating and may have found a possible link between the wallets to Terra Labs and LFG. It is stressed that "these accounts may be directly or indirectly controlled by the same or related entities, such as TFL or LFG."

source: sentinel protocol

LuncDAO that is mentioned in the investigation threatened a lawsuit for commercial defamation:

"Today Cybersecurity Firm UPPSentinel published an article defaming us. If we are not sent a $250K $USD settlement for commercial defamation within 28 days, our lawyers will undertake immediate legal action. We will use this money to buy + burn $LUNC."

LuncDAO full response

Ben Samocha, the Co-Founder of CryptoJungle and CryptoTalks shares his views on Terra Luna and Luna 2.0.

What are your thoughts on the collapse of Terra Luna?

"The Terra Luna collapse was, in my belief, an obvious thing that was about to happen sooner or later. While educating my community in Israel, I shared with them why the TerraUSD & LUNA model is ponzi-like, whether if intended to be so or not, and why I believe it will fail.

"Never have I expected it to happen so soon and so fast, but it narrows down to the bottom line: if the federal reserve’s fed funds rate was 0% (or close to it), how can one offer a 20% yield on an alleged pegged USD? It can only be done via a. someone paying for it, whether the company (i.e. Terraform Labs / Luna Foundation Guard) or new investors piling it (ponzi-like), or by taking enormous risks to try to obtain these yields via the open markets, which we know wasn’t the case."

What are your thoughts on the research that possibly ties LFG or Terra Luna Labs to the chain of events?

"It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that [it] is indeed correct. The on-chain analysis of the research seems legitimate. This whole situation is very confusing, to be honest, and is lacking transparency which is why it is hard to comment."

What are your expectations from Luna 2.0, how do you see it trading in 3 years from now?

"I believe LUNA 2.0 is a joke and an insult to the investors who were hurt by this incident. The entire value proposition of LUNA itself was built around the UST ponzi, which obviously doesn’t exist in the 'new' protocol.

"I also believe investors and network participants have completely lost their trust in the network, and that it is irresponsible of exchanges and brokers to even allow the trading of this new coin and not simply a market just to get rid of it ASAP."