Anchor Protocol
Summary
Anchor Protocol was a decentralized money market built on the Terra blockchain that offered a near-fixed 20% APY on deposits of the algorithmic stablecoin UST. The advertised yield was structurally unsustainable, requiring repeated multi-hundred-million-dollar cash injections from Terraform Labs to prevent reserve depletion. When UST depegged in May 2022, a bank run on Anchor drained over $14 billion in TVL within days and accelerated the complete collapse of the Terra/Luna ecosystem, destroying an estimated $40 billion in market value.
Connected Entities
1 entities · 10 linked investigations- + 5 more
Timeline(15 events)
2021-03-17
Anchor Protocol launches on the Terra blockchain, offering approximately 20% APY on UST deposits.
CryptoNinjas2021-07-01
Terraform Labs injects $70 million UST into the Anchor yield reserve after it approaches depletion for the first time.
CoinDesk2022-01-28
CoinDesk reports the Anchor yield reserve has declined 35.7% in one week to approximately $35.7 million; deposit-to-borrow ratio exceeds 290%.
CoinDesk2022-02-10
Luna Foundation Guard passes proposal to inject $450 million UST into Anchor's yield reserve to prevent imminent depletion.
CoinTelegraph2022-02-18
Terraform Labs executes the $450 million UST injection into the Anchor yield reserve.
CoinTelegraph2022-03-25
Anchor governance passes Proposal 20, implementing a semi-dynamic earn rate with monthly adjustments of up to 1.5% based on yield reserve performance.
CoinDesk2022-05-07
Two large addresses withdraw approximately 375 million UST from Anchor; a separate swap of 85 million UST for USDC is recorded on-chain. UST slips to $0.985.
NBER Working Paper No. 311602022-05-08
Accelerating withdrawals from Anchor; approximately $2.3 billion UST pulled. UST falls to approximately $0.91.
Caleb & Brown2022-05-09
Approximately 5 billion UST (35% of all UST deposited on Anchor) withdrawn in a single day. UST depeg accelerates.
NBER Working Paper No. 311602022-05-11
Over $11 billion UST withdrawn from Anchor cumulatively. UST trades at $0.23. LUNA supply expands hyperinflationally from ~1 billion to over 6 trillion tokens.
NBER Working Paper No. 31160 / CoinCodex2022-05-12
Terra blockchain halted at block 7,603,700. Anchor Protocol governance votes to halt all earning and borrowing activity.
CryptoSlate2022-05-31
Anchor TVL falls below $30 million — down from approximately $14–18 billion at peak. Total Terra ecosystem losses estimated at approximately $40 billion.
CoinChapter / CoinCodex2023-02-16
SEC files fraud charges against Terraform Labs and Do Kwon in the Southern District of New York, specifically citing Anchor's 20% UST yield as a key element of alleged investor deception.
SEC.gov2024-06-13
Terraform Labs and Do Kwon agree to pay $4.5 billion to settle SEC fraud charges following a unanimous jury verdict. Terraform agrees to wind down operations.
SEC.gov2025-12-12
Do Kwon sentenced to 15 years in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer for orchestrating a $40 billion fraud.
NBC News / DOJ SDNYDecision Log
- hash: 6mX8qJTPPYHrMwLqsRQBzQQfJtGPtEwpEUsB7pfLPkZq
This investigation is cryptographically anchored to the Solana blockchain and source URLs are archived via the Internet Archive.
model: claude-sonnet-4-5
generated: 5/30/2026, 12:57:23 PM
last updated: 5/30/2026, 12:57:28 PM
avoid.net — verified advice for a post-truth world