By
Kseniia Klichova
January 24th, 2024
The THORChain protocol is enjoying a RUNE token spike after officially its mainnet launch, following a four-year wait.
THORChain native token RUNE is up 16% following the project’s official mainnet launch on Wednesday. The protocol’s development team also launched the “Rune in a Million Campaign” on Binance alongside the mainnet launch. This campaign has $1 million worth of RUNE rewards up for grabs by Binance customers.
❗️Announcing: Mainnet
Since April 2021, THORChain has been hardening under its beta label, Multichain Chaosnet, which will now transition to Mainnet.
Read: https://t.co/aLOpEUp9iQ (🧵1/8)
— THORChain (@THORChain) June 22, 2022
Insight into THORChain Mainnet Launch & Token Price Upswing
According to developers, THORChain’s native blockchain went live on seven supported networks after nearly four years of development. The decentralized liquidity protocol currently supports swaps on seven leading ecosystems. These include Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Binance Coins (BNB), Dogecoin (DOGE), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), as well as Rune (RUNE). Furthermore, according to developers, THORChain would soon enjoy support for cosmos (ATOM) and avalanche (AVAX). The cross-chain exchange and proof-of-bond network also states that it has processed more than $3.7 billion worth of native on-chain swaps. Additionally, the THORChain project also reportedly has approximately $299.7 million worth of total value locked (TVL).
Speaking on the THORChain mainnet launch and resulting token upswing situation, the project’s development team explained:
“Mainnet marks the achievement of a fully functional, feature-rich protocol with a large ecosystem and strong community. It has been a long time coming and the community is very excited about this important milestone.”
Furthermore, the project’s developers also provided an outlook on the protocol’s focus following the mainnet launch. These include integrating with more decentralized exchanges (DEX) and exchange aggregators. So far, notable crypto exchanges such as Binance, Crypto.com, Coinspot, Swyftx, and KuCoin have all pledged to support the asset.
Meanwhile, as of press time, RUNE was changing hands at $2.18, representing a 31.6% increase over the past seven days. Although this development presents some respite for RUNE, the token is still down 31% from its early June price of $3.21. Furthermore, RUNE is also still some way off its record highs of more than $20 in May last year, according to CoinGecko data.
THORChain
THORChain allows users to swap assets in a permissionless setting, enabling the exchange of native layer-1 assets such as BTC. The protocol achieves this by taking on the role of vault manager and secures its network using Tendermint and Cosmos-SDK. In addition, THORChain also supports several synthetic versions of digital currencies ranging from BTC to AAVE. Synthetic assets are tokenized derivatives that mimic other assets.
The THORChain project launched in 2018 and is in transition from its beta version – “multichain chaosnet,” which went live in April last year. This beta version has also suffered multi-million-dollar hacks in the past, most notably a $7.6 million exploit in July 2021.
The THORChain development team also noted the protocol’s transition over four years. It presently functions as a community-driven network exclusively controlled by up to 100 decentralized nodes. Prior to this development, THORChain only functioned as a fully centralized project.
