THORChain Mainnet Goes Live on 7 Networks; RUNE Spikes

The much-awaited network went live after nearly four years of development.

By Shaurya Malwa

Jun 24, 2022 at 8:12 a.m. UTC

Updated Jun 29, 2022 at 6:24 p.m. UTC

Shaurya Malwa

Shaurya is an analyst/editor for CoinDesk's markets team in Asia.

Follow @shauryamalwa on Twitter

THORChain's native blockchain went live on seven supported networks after nearly four years of development, developers said in a post on Thursday.

THORChain allows users to trade bitcoin (BTC) for any other supported asset without the use of bridges or wrapped assets. Bridges are protocols that rely on smart contracts to exchange coins from different blockchains between users.
The protocol currently supports swaps between seven major ecosystems: bitcoin, ether (ETH), binance coins (BNB), dogecoin (DOGE), litecoin (LTC), bitcoin cash (BCH) and rune (RUNE). Support for cosmos (ATOM) and avalanche (AVAX) is expected shortly, developers said.

Developers said the protocol’s focus after the mainnet launch would be on integrating with more decentralized exchanges (DEX) and exchange aggregators.
Community members can propose new additions or features on THORChain’s decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), but node operators ultimately approve which features are pushed live.
The previous network, called ChaosNet, saw some $9.2 billion traded over 3.4 million swaps from some 71,000 unique traders, developers said. The platform earned nearly $80 million in fees from such activity, with a $1.33 million swap being the largest on that platform.
THORChain’s native rune (RUNE) token surged some 40% in nearly 48 hours even as the broader crypto market remained stable. RUNE saw some profit-taking in early European hours Friday to trade at the $2.15 level at press time. The tokens are, however, down 89% since lifetime highs of over $20 in May 2021, CoinGecko data shows.

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