THORChain Mainnet Goes Live on 7 Networks; RUNE Spikes

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$89,140.78 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$3,034.52, binance coins BNB$891.71, DOGE$0.1395, LTC$81.71, BCH$587.54 and rune (RUNE). Support for ATOM$2.2402 and AVAX$13.39 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.