For any of you that don’t know, asian countries are dominating the race for the development of cryptocurrency technology; Chinese and Korean groups alone own 149 of 437 granted and pending cryptocurrency patents worldwide. One of the companies personifying this strive to make blockchain and crypto more incorporated in our everyday life is South Korean company Terra.

Backed by four of the largest crypto exchanges and a recent $32 million investment, this groundbreaking company is hoping to change the way the e-commerce industry works. To achieve this they’re currently developing a ‘stable coin’, which is conveniently also called Terra. For those unacquainted with the terminology, the function of stable coins is fairly self explanatory, they’re designed to remain at the same price. These are usually pegged to either the U.S. dollar or gold to discourage extreme price fluctuations and investor speculation; two trademark characteristics of current cryptocurrencies.

In order to maintain Terra’s price they’re looking to use what founder Daniel Shin describes as a ‘decentralized stability reserve’. This consists of a second, collateral, cryptocurrency they’re calling Luna, used to purchase back the Terra when the price rises too high whilst also having the ability to burn any when the price is too low.

Users will be incentivised to do transactions through online platforms with the digital coin instead of credit cards or cash by receiving discounts on the coin in return. This means they’ll be competing with traditional online payment companies such as PayPal and China’s equivalent Alipay. Taking on Titans e-commerce industry is brave to say the least, however already, Terra has secured quite a list of partners. It has form a Terra Alliance with 15 e-commerce services wanting to incorporate the coin into their business, making 40 million customers and $25 billion in transaction volume annually available to them. The user base available to them makes sets them apart from others trying to break into the industry and gives them greater ability to distribute money back to these companies and their consumers through discounts.

Terra are dreaming big and rightly so. Their breakthrough into the industry will offer greater security at a fraction of the costs. Credit card fees and other payment providers will be cut out, potentially saving ecommerce partners millions in transactions fees. Whilst investors foresee payments accumulating to hundreds of millions of dollars before 2019 is finished, with the long term goal of hitting $150 billion in sales by 2022.

Terra could completely redefine the way we deal with payments and with big names in the crypto world backing them you wouldn’t want to bet against them. However, it is undeniably an insanely ambitious project. Developing a stable coin alone is a monstoreous task, but going head to head with the multibillion dollar companies of PayPal and Alipay makes this an even more daunting prospect.