LUNA plummeted 99% to below 2 cents, and Terra Blockchain officially announced the suspension

As Terra (LUNA) tokens plummeted by more than 99%, the Terra blockchain's validators have decided to officially stop network activities on Thursday, a move aimed at preventing governance attacks after the LUNA tokens depreciated severely. Bitpush terminal data shows that as of press time, the price of LUNA is $0.023.

Terraform Labs ’ official Twitter account confirmed that the Terra blockchain was stopped at block 7,603,700. The price of LUNA fell from nearly $120 in early April to between 1 and 2 cents on Thursday. The blockchain being suspended means that transactions with UST, LUNA, or Terra’s other cryptocurrencies cannot be processed. Token holders will have to wait for the blockchain to restart.

Terraform said the network’s validators “will coordinate” to restart the network as quickly as possible.

LUNA and its associated UST stablecoin have seen unprecedented declines. The price of LUNA has plunged by more than $80 in three days, with UST losing its peg earlier this week and falling below $0.30. Terraform has issued more than 1 billion LUNA as circulating supply to alleviate selling pressure since Monday.

With LUNA’s price plummeting by more than 99%, Terraform Labs is no longer confident it can prevent a governance attack. In other words, the price drop “significantly reduces the cost of an attack,” the ecosystem operator wrote on Twitter Thursday.

Binance is taking further steps to combat the ongoing Terra “death spiral.” The company officially announced Thursday that Binance Futures , Binance’s derivatives arm, has automatically settled and delisted its coin-backed LUNA perpetual contract. Binance also said it will delist its LUNAUSDT perpetual contract if the price falls below 0.005 USDT and has launched the LUNABUSD perpetual contract with a price accuracy of 0.00001. “Users are advised to close any open positions before the delisting time to avoid automatic settlement,” the platform wrote in the statement.

Earlier this week, Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon shared details about a recovery plan that would help keep UST’s peg to the U.S. dollar from further depreciation.

On Thursday, Terra’s official Twitter account further elaborated on these plans, laying out a strategy to burn $1.4 billion in UST and hold 240 million shares of LUNA. However, the rescue plan failed to stop the market sell-off.

Prior to this week’s events, LUNA was a top-10 cryptocurrency project by market cap and its UST asset was the third-largest stablecoin after Tether (USDT) and USD Coin ( USDC ).