Tera is a blockchain protocol that claims to offer fast transaction speeds, processing over 1,000 smart contracts per second. The protocol functions as a highly decentralized platform for developing decentralized applications (DApps). The Tera network seeks to bring thousands of blockchain networks, each built for a specific purpose, on its platform to create a giant global network. 

Tera claims that the nodes on the platform are organized in an orderly manner, unlike traditional blockchain platforms. Blockchain nodes are small interconnected servers that continuously exchange information on the blockchain network. Tera also aims to transfer information from the first node to the last one in three seconds, using a special connection to connect the nodes in order of their addresses. 

The Tera blockchain seeks to prioritize security for all the crypto wallets, DApps, and digital assets managed on the platform. Therefore, the network claims to pay about 100,000 TERA coins to bug hunters for finding critical vulnerabilities that could lead to theft or network malfunction. TERA is the native cryptocurrency of the Tera blockchain. The network uses the proof-of-work consensus mechanism for block creation, seeking to process confirmations every 10 seconds. 

Moreover, the Tera blockchain deploys a sharding protocol with the aim to achieve 1 million transactions per second. Sharding is a data partitioning technique designed to increase transaction output. The platform claims that general sharding compromises security, and to prevent it, Tera blockchain uses ‘merged-mining.’ According to the whitepaper, merged mining maintains the complexity of the hashes, which keeps the network's security intact. A hash is a mathematical puzzle a miner needs to solve to verify transactions in a blockchain. 

The Tera blockchain was launched in September 2017, while the TERA token was released on July 1, 2018. TERA has a maximum total supply of 1,000,000,000 tokens. The network launched the Tera Wallet DApps for Android and iOS in 2019, while the Sharding protocol was implemented in 2020.