Mars Protocol was formerly one of the leading lenders within the Terra ecosystem. The Terra collapse erased approximately $60 Billion from the cryptocurrency market and Mars Protocol and Astroport Exchange experienced a combined $1.2 Billion decline in total value locked. But while certain platforms waned [i.e. Pylon protocol (MINE)], other platforms were able to reignite such as Mars.
The MARS token suffered huge losses following the Terra collapse and was subsequently delisted on both Binance and Coinbase. Accordingly, the success of the rekindled MARS token rests on convincing new investors it can be successful despite Terra as well as the platform's capability to divorce itself from its tainted past.
According to a January 20 statement, Mars Hub will launch its mainnet on Cosmos on January 31, 2023 as "a novel interchain credit protocol primitive facilitating borrowing and lending in the Cosmos ecosystem" [Mars Protocol. A New Hope: Unveiling the Mars Hub launch sequence. (Accessed January 23, 2023)]. This Mars Hub serves as a home base for the platform with an 'array of outposts' being housed on other blockchains commencing with Osmosis in February, 2023.
Eventually, each of these platform outposts will power 'Mars Rover credit accounts. These will "unlock cross-margined leveraged trading, yield strategies and more in a completely decentralized, noncustodial environment" [Id].
According to the statement:
The mission is straightforward: to build a full-stack DeFi product experience that looks and feels like CeFi while preserving the benefits of decentralization: non-custodial, transparent, trustless, resilient.
[Id].
When this mainnet goes live, there will be 16 experienced validators [Block Pane, Chill Validation, Chorus One, Cosmology, CryptoCrew Validators, ECO Stake, Imperator.co, Injective, Jabbey, Needlecast, Notional, Oni, P2P Validator, polkachu, Simply Staking, Smart Stake]. After the launch, 34 additional validators will be added maintaining a cap of 50 validators.
Each of the 16 genesis validators will receive a proportional delegation of 50 million MARS tokens to be returned to the community pool after one month. According to the statement, the purpose of this delegation is to afford safe and secure launch conditions. The statement further notes: "This temporary delegation will help protect the network from attack by a rogue validator that could potentially accumulate a large delegation of MARS shortly after genesis and begin manipulating transactions on-chain" [Id].
The rekindled MARS tokens may be claimed by eligible addresses by way of an airdrop that goes live with the mainnet. 64.4 million Mars tokens will be unlocked for the benefit of those who held MARS on the dates of the two historical snapshots from Terra Classic [the snapshots having taken place as follows: block 7544910 (May 7, 2022, ~11 a.m. EST), and block 7816580 (May 28, 2022, ~11 a.m. EST]. These tokens will be available for claiming on Terra's new interchain wallet, Station. Governance power will be given to users who held Mars tokens on Terra Classic.
To check your eligibility to receive these tokens, users must access Station and change the wallet network to 'Testnet' then check the upcoming MARS airdrop on the Mars Hub.