Project Dawn initiative and upcoming mainnet upgrade back LUNA’s new ATH

In the last 24 hours, Terra (LUNA), a blockchain protocol focused on building a global payments system powered by the UST stablecoin, rallied to a new all-time high at $45. 

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that, since bottoming at a low of $5.61 on July 20, the price of LUNA has ripped 720% higher to a record high of $45 on Sept. 10.

The swift rally also lifted the total value locked (TVL) on the Terra protocol to a new all-time high at $7.83 billion on Sept. 5, making Terra the fourth-ranked blockchain platform by TVL, according to Defi Llama.

Related: Altcoin Roundup: Layer-one protocols chip away at Ethereum’s dominance.

A new funding initiative boosts LUNA price

A scroll through the project’s Twitter feed shows that the surge in price followed the announcement of “Project Dawn,” a new funding initiative for the Terra ecosystem meant to help improve critical infrastructure and accelerate the growth of the ecosystem.

1/ TFL is announcing Project Dawn, a new funding initiative for critical infrastructure improvements and core technologies to supplement the accelerating growth of the Terra ecosystem. Details: https://t.co/Viv9VkAApT

According to Terra co-founder Do Kwon, Project Dawn has allocated $150 million to “build a core Cosmos contributor organization, invest in the ecosystem’s node infrastructure, and diversify the validator and oracle infrastructure.”

Another source of excitement for the Terra community is the upcoming launch of its Colombus-5 mainnet upgrade on Sept. 29, which is “Terra’s most significant mainnet upgrade,” according to the project.

1/ The Columbus-5 mainnet deployment will be delayed ~3 weeks until a new block height of 4,724,000, roughly equivalent to the following times: 9/29 at 20:30 PST 9/30 at 03:30 UTC9/30 at 12:30 KST

On top of developments to the main protocol, LUNA price has also benefited from the expansion of the Terra ecosystem, which has seen new DeFi protocols like AlphaDeFi launch and begin to attract liquidity.

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