THORChain(RUNE)

As the crypto market matures, the need for cross-network liquidity increases —  THORChain aims to fill that gap. Built as a cross-chain liquidity network using the Cosmo SDK, it strives to make all crypto liquid and decentralized with its native token RUNE serving as a trading token between non-native crypto assets like BTC and ETH. Broadly speaking, THORChain does exactly what Binance, Coinbase, and other exchanges do but without a third-party ever getting involved.

THORChain was founded back in 2018 by a mostly anonymous team during a hackathon, the protocol’s mainnet release multi-chain chaos network (MCCN) went live in April 2021 after initial development testing. Unlike Uniswap, SushiSwap, and Curve, THORChain is not limited to just ERC-20 or BEP-20 tokens, instead, you can swap between different blockchains with relatively low costs and high speeds, all through a decentralized exchange (DEX). 

RUNE price

According to our RUNE/USD live price chart, THORChain saw its first bull run in Q1 of 2021, when RUNE went from under $0.9 in December 2020 to a peak of around $6.7 on March. 11, 2021 — a gain of over 700%. Although RUNE hit a rough patch for a couple of days during March, it saw another rally that took it from $4.9 on March. 25, 2021 to $21.2 by May. 19, 2021, setting an all-time high with a rather impressive gain of 350%+ in just 55 days. At the time, RUNE's fully diluted valuation stood at $10.6 billion given the token's max supply of 500,000,000.

However, as the market sentiment grew bearish in May 2021, RUNE saw a steep decline in the coming months.

THORChain saw some noteworthy price action between July and November 2021, as the price of RUNE cryptocurrency rallied from $4.8 on July. 22, 2021, to around $17.2 by Nov. 2, 2021.

Despite the market falling in Q4 of 2021 and continuing this downward spiral into 2022, RUNE managed to stay within the top 50 coins by market cap in Q2 2022, while trading around $8.

How RUNE works

At its core, THORChain RUNE is an independent Layer-1 blockchain built using the Cosmos SDK and the Tendermint byzantine-fault-tolerant (BFT) consensus mechanism, allowing the network to reach a consensus even if ⅓ of the nodes start failing.

It also employs the proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism for Sybil resistance. This means the blockchain is secured by node operators also known as validators who authorize swaps and in return earn rewards for creating pools or vaults for assets. 

An asset is sent to a pool or vault when a swap is made on the THORChain blockchain. To ensure the swap is made and the designated address receives the coins, Threshold Signature Schemes (TSS) is used, where ⅔ of nodes confirm that the transaction was successful. 

There are 100 to 300 node operator spots. These spots are recycled regularly in a process called “churning”, where sets of nodes are switched every 50,000 blocks, which is roughly around 3 days to avoid any bad nodes taking over the network and capturing it. 

To be eligible for a spot on the THORChain blockchain, nodes must bond (i.e stake) $1 million RUNE coins. Nodes that act accordingly are rewarded a portion of the protocol’s income, while bad nodes lose their bonded RUNE coins. 

THORChain (RUNE) protocol also uses the AMM (Automated market makers) model. AMMs are DEXs that pool liquidity from users and generate prices based on the respective amount of each asset held inside the pool. Liquidity providers are granted a small portion of the fee paid by traders while receiving RUNE rewards for depositing RUNE and one other asset to the liquidity pool.

RUNE news, updates, and highlights

In April 2021, ShapeShift, an international non-custodial cryptocurrency exchange announced that it had enabled cross-chain swaps via THORChain and Ethereum-based DEX trading on their web platform. 

Founder and CEO of ShapeShift, Erik Voorhees, said, “We are very excited to offer users more options for trading in the manner they prefer—be it on mobile, web, software wallet or hardware wallet, ETH or native BTC, while at the same time providing the best incentives available in DEX trading”. 

The company also added RUNE to its KeepKey and ShapeShift native wallets. 

THORChain RUNE suffered a massive security breach in July 2021, when a hacker tricked the network’s Bifrost protocol into receiving fake assets on the ETH Router with a custom contract. This cost the company $8 million and resulted in the immediate halting of ETH activity on the THORChain blockchain.  Just a week prior to this incident, THORChain suffered another attack which resulted in the loss of 4k ETH from the crypto trading protocol.

RUNE cryptocurrency saw a surge in price in March 2022, when it decided to integrate Terra (LUNA) into the THORChain protocol and Cosmos ecosystem, giving users more trading and staking options.THORChain also hinted at an upcoming mainnet launch and was also considering offering liquidity providers more generous returns.

Frequently asked questions about RUNE

• Can I mine or stake RUNE?

THORChain is a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain, which means it cannot be mined but can be staked. Users can stake their RUNE tokens to generate yield or vote on the governance of a protocol. Liquidity providers can stake their assets in pools to collect fees when trades are made on the network by other users.

• What are some of the best RUNE wallets?

THORWallet DEX is the only native non-custodial wallet for RUNE. Available as a mobile app, it lets you earn passive income by swapping native cryptos across chains. Trust Wallet and XDEFI Wallet are also some other popular options. If you are in search of hardware wallets then Ledger Nano S, Ledger Nano X and Trezor are suitable options.

• What can you do with RUNE?

RUNE tokens can be used for governance, so as to activate pools with the most liquidity. The RUNE token is also used to reward nodes and incentivize them to secure the network. Liquidity Providers also receive incentives or swap commissions in RUNES.

• How to buy RUNE?

You can buy THORChain RUNE on centralized exchanges like HitBTC, with trading pair RUNE/BTC, and MEXC, with trading pair RUNE/USDT. However, you can also buy RUNE using fiat currency on exchanges like Binance.