Pedro wipes the sleep from his eyes, kisses his wife on the cheek, and rolls over to pick up his phone to check on his Luna Classic validators. In the real world, he's waking up for his job as the head brewer at a beerhouse. But in the virtual one, he's known as Vegas, one of the leading voices in the Terra Luna Classic community.
Terra Luna Classic is the blockchain that was forked and abandoned when Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon attempted to save his crumbling empire in 2022. Kwon has since been convicted of fraud and sentenced to 15 years in prison over the $40 billion collapse of Terra. But the network he and his company created—decentralized as it is—lives on, with the support of individuals from around the world who have poured significant amounts of time and money into the project.
Vegas told Decrypt he had approximately $50,000 invested in Terra at the time of its collapse, subsequently finding himself at ground zero when efforts began to salvage the project.