It might take a year or two for people to realise the significance of THORChain’s launch, according to the ShapeShift CEO
Erik Voorhees, CEO of ShapeShift and a long-time expert within the crypto industry, stated in a tweet earlier today that the launch of THORChain, the independent blockchain built using Cosmos SDK, will arguably be the biggest crypto event of the week.
The suggestion from the crypto stalwart raised a few eyebrows as major US-based crypto exchange Coinbase is set to list on NASDAQ tomorrow. Coinbase’s potential valuation is estimated by derivatives exchange FTX to be around $140 billion with the IPO being hailed as a mark of the growing mainstream acceptance of crypto as a means of investment. This has made Voorhees’ comments about THORChain all the more important.
THORChain’s launch will be a milestone event for the crypto community as the blockchain will enable the trading of native crypto assets on a decentralized exchange (DEX) across unique blockchains without the hassles of bridging technology or wrapping tokens.
Voorhees’ tweet highlighted the benefits of THORChain by pointing out that the launch of a native cross-chain DEX will be crucial in furthering innovation in the crypto industry. “THORChain has no bridges. It has no wrapping. It is native assets, swapped across chains in a decentralized way, for the first time ever,” Voorhees explained.
THORChain’s launch party is scheduled for 18:00 EST today on the social platform Clubhouse with the guest list including some of the biggest names in the crypto world, from Voorhees himself to several ShapeShift executives, Multicoin Capital managing partner Tushar Jain, Delphi Digital co-founder Yan Liberman, and several others.
The decentralised exchange will initially host pairings for top cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Binance Coin. The platform has also expressed plans to support more crypto assets in the future.
THORChain, based on the Tendermint consensus protocol, is backed by RUNE, its native token that performs the role of collateral to facilitate trades. While its operation is identical to that of other automated market makers like Uniswap, THORChain’s trump card is its ability to allow the trading and swapping of crypto assets from completely different blockchains and networks.
Chaosnet, THORChain’s cross-chain network, is used to swap assets without assistance from third-party intermediaries. For example, to swap BTC for ETH, the exchange trades BTC for its native token RUNE, instead of the wrapped version of BTC, and then swaps this RUNE for ETH. This series of trades is carried out at high speed to ensure that the intermediary trade does not affect the user.
RUNE has been making headlines recently as the currency rose by over 13% and hit an all-time high of $12.65 earlier this year.
