Total amount of Luna tokens staked down 62% from ATH even amid massive price rally
Nearly 420 million Luna worth $36 billion has been unstaked from pools since July 2021. Whilst the price of Luna rises, the truth is that investors have been pulling money from staking pools for months.
Cover art/illustration via CryptoSlate. Image includes combined content which may include AI-generated content.
[cs_coin]LUNA[/cs_coin] has recently made many headlines due to its meteoric gains. Unfortunately, this can occasionally lead to confirmation bias in how we view the stats behind our most beloved crypto assets.
If you’ve been reading around the cryptosphere this week, you will be forgiven for believing that [cs_coin]LUNA[/cs_coin] is now the second-largest asset by staking value. For example, stakingrewards.com tweeted this week how [cs_coin]LUNA[/cs_coin] has overtaken Ethereum 2.0 staking.
Terra $LUNA is now the 2nd largest PoS network by Staking market cap having overtaken Ethereum 2.0 $ETH 🔥
Source: https://t.co/R9BVR4Ce4W pic.twitter.com/33CgPrr99a
— Staking Rewards (@StakingRewards) March 1, 2022
Whilst it is true that [cs_coin]LUNA[/cs_coin] has seen an increase in the staked value in $USD over the past few weeks, this does not tell the whole story.
Staked Luna down 416 million from ATH
Most people only look at crypto charts in $USD, making it easier to understand in ‘real world’ terms. However, if we look at the current value of [cs_coin]LUNA[/cs_coin] staked in $USD, we are currently at an all-time high of around $25 billion. This paints a picture that investors are more bullish than ever on staking [cs_coin]LUNA[/cs_coin].
However, when we look instead at the actual amount of [cs_coin]LUNA[/cs_coin] staked, we get a completely different story.
The all-time high for the amount of [cs_coin]LUNA[/cs_coin] staked was back in July 2021 at around 667 million [cs_coin]LUNA[/cs_coin] whilst today’s TVL sits at just 280 million [cs_coin]LUNA[/cs_coin]. If we zoom in further, it worsens as we are not even at a local high, with the locked value dropping 19% since February 18.
This does not instill the confidence that other headlines focusing only on the $USD value are purporting. However, whether investors are unstaking to take profits from the recent 78% gains is anyone’s guess at this stage.
Has Luna overtaken ETH2.0?
Now, let’s look at the data that supports the theory that [cs_coin]LUNA[/cs_coin] has overtaken ETH2.0 staking. As we can see, this first chart from stakingrewards.com does in fact show [cs_coin]LUNA[/cs_coin] ahead of ETH2.0 and second only to [cs_coin]SOL[/cs_coin].
However, a similar chart from defillama.com suggests that Ethereum has over $100b more in locked value and, in fact, [cs_coin]LUNA[/cs_coin] is ahead of Solana by quite some margin.
So. How can this be? Perhaps, there is a conspiracy to make Ethereum look inferior by some interested parties? Is one dashboard more reliable than the other?
The short answer is no. DeFI Llama looks at more than Eth2.0 staking when calculating TVL figures. For example, the [cs_coin]ETH[cs_coin] dataset contains many protocols Curve, Maker, Aave, and Uniswap listed separately on Staking Rewards. If unsure, you can check the code, which is a nice touch given the confusion the way different platforms report the figures.
Staking Rewards also appears to assess many more staking platforms for [cs_coin]SOL[/cs_coin] than its counterpart, which likely explains the difference in reported total staking value.
It is essential to look beyond just the $USD value when assessing crypto assets. A pump such as that experienced by Luna will cause a correlating surge in staking values for the asset in question. As a result, staking outflows can hide from the untrained eye. Furthermore, not all dashboards use the same data, so there can be a lot to be learned by exploring different platforms.
At the time of press 1:08 am UTC on Mar. 4, 2022, Terra is ranked #7 by market cap and the price is down 5.1% over the past 24 hours. Terra has a market capitalization of $32.59 billion with a 24-hour trading volume of $3.27 billion. Learn more about Terra ›
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