As Wormhole ‘unleashes’ Terra, a ‘cross-chain trade boom’ might ensue

Interoperability is trending across the crypto sector and blockchains are coming up with innovative proposals and workarounds, in order to meet users’ diverse needs.

A recent example of this was when the Wormhole Network added a fourth blockchain to its collection of supported chains.

A ‘Terra-fic’ update

On 20 October, the twelfth biggest blockchain by market cap announced that the Wormhole V2 User Interface would be supporting it. This meant one user interface was all that was needed to send assets through Ethereum, Solana, Binance Smart Chain, and now Terra.

A Terra Money blog post stated,

“Wormhole unleashes Terra assets, particularly UST, into Solana’s burgeoning DeFi ecosystem and presents a trust-minimized conduit for users to send assets between Terra and Ethereum as well.”

TerraUSD [UST] is a decentralized stablecoin pegged to the US Dollar. Furthermore, the LUNA alt coin would also be able to move between the four blockchains.

At press time, the price of LUNA was $38.86.

1/ We're ecstatic to announce the long-anticipated support of @terra_money to the Wormhole token bridge! 🚀 Terra is known for its vibrant ecosystem, #LUNAtic community, and its decentralized stablecoin, $UST. https://t.co/T5eAVkY0As

— Wormhole (@wormhole) October 19, 2021

Dramatic vs insane growth

In a tweet, Wormhole declared that Terra’s growth rate was “dramatic” and took note of its ecosystem, community, and UST stablecoin. Why is this important? Because the cross-chain support also meant more options for DEXs and DeFi.

*** REMINDER ***

Shortly after the implementation of IBC and Wormhole on @terra_money, the Loop DEX will see a flood of new token listings:$ETH$SOL$MATIC$BNB$CAKE$LINK$SUSHI$UNI$AKT $ATOM$RUNE$OSMO$SCRT$USDT$USDC

Read about it 👇👇👇https://t.co/Jrw7tLlGtN

— Loop Fans: Turning Communities into Growth Engines (@loopfans) October 19, 2021

Growth seems to be an important factor here. In an earlier statement, Wormhole had called BSC’s level of growth “insane.” The now third biggest blockchain by market cap recently hit a milestone of 100 million unique addresses.

Meanwhile, Messari researcher Ryan Watkins suggested that a “cross-chain trade boom” might be possible after the IBC [inter-blockchain communication] protocol launch.

The infrastructure necessary for Terra’s next leg of UST growth is nearing completion.

– Columbus-5: Live
– Wormhole V2: Live
– IBC: ~24 hours till launch

What happens next has the potential to kick off a cross-chain trade boom. https://t.co/J6Rn02bfPB

— Ryan Watkins (@RyanWatkins_) October 20, 2021

Chains or exchanges?

When it comes to interoperability, both blockchains and crypto exchanges have skin in the game. While Ethereum, Solana, Binance Smart Chain and now Terra have cross-chain support for bridging assets, Coinbase has announced its plans to launch Coinbase NFT. The crypto exchange aspires to create a single interface for NFTs across all blockchains, starting with Ethereum.

Coming to the ETH <> SOL bridge, more than 100 NFTs moved across it during just the starting days. Meanwhile, at press time, more than 1 million people had signed up for Coinbase NFT.

So which model will win? Investors and creators may not have to wait long to see.