Terra Luna Classic Community Presses On With Chain Maintenance After Kwon's Fraud Conviction

A dedicated group of community members continues to maintain the Terra Luna Classic blockchain years after Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 15 years in prison over the $40 billion collapse of Terra in 2022. The original chain, renamed Terra Luna Classic after Terraform Labs hard forked the network to remove the depegged algorithmic stablecoin UST, survives through the efforts of validators and developers around the world, including a figure known online as Vegas (@VegasMorph).

Vegas, a Portuguese-born head brewer at a beerhouse, told Decrypt he had approximately $50,000 invested in Terra at the time of its collapse. He now runs validators on the network and serves as a point of contact for community members with support requests and developers working on proposals. "If you ask my wife, she will say that I'm crazy, but no. I think there's still hope on the chain. I think there's massive potential for this chain to be a top 10 chain again," Vegas said, describing a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week commitment that begins each morning with checking developer group chats, scanning for exploit concerns, and scrolling through Telegram and Discord while making breakfast.

The community's persistence comes amid ongoing internal tensions. When Decrypt joined the Terra Classic Telegram group to speak with Vegas, several users sent direct messages accusing Vegas of being a scammer. Vegas attributed the hostility to the realities of decentralized governance. "Decentralization is amazing, but at the same time, it is cruel because people want to take the spotlight," he said, adding that the disputes have extended beyond online friction: "I've had physical problems in my real life with people calling the police to my house, to my work, and some other stuff … horrible, horrible times."

The original Terra collapse unfolded in May 2022, when the LUNA token entered free fall and UST lost its dollar peg. In a last-ditch effort, Kwon posted his now-infamous "steady lads" message on social media on May 9, 2022, urging supporters to deploy more capital before Terraform Labs executed the hard fork that created Terra Luna Classic—a structure mirroring the relationship between Ethereum and Ethereum Classic. While Kwon serves his sentence, the chain he helped build continues to operate under the stewardship of community members such as Vegas.