THORChain becomes third-largest DEX as RUNE surges 50% in a week

Native asset settlement protocol THORChain has recorded the third-largest trading volume among decentralized exchanges in the last week, with users seemingly attracted to the high yield offered adjacent to its native token, RUNE (RUNE).

Over the last week, THORChain’s trading volume hit $1.32 billion, third only behind Uniswap and PancakeSwap at $10.85 billion and $2.77 billion, respectively, according to DefiLlama.

THORChain also boasts the second-largest trading volume at $334.3 million over the last 24 hours, nearly $50 million more than third-placed PancakeSwap.

Meanwhile, RUNE increased 51% over the last week and more than 200% over the last 30 days, according to CoinGecko.

THORChain’s rise past Curve Finance happened much earlier than what THORChain core developer Chad Barraford predicted, who initially estimated the flippening to happen before the end of 2023.

“Okay, this happened much faster than I thought. Just took 2 days instead of 2 months,” Barraford noted in a Nov. 13 X (formerly Twitter) post.

Okay, this happened much faster than i thought. Just took 2 days instead of 2 months. But its happened, @THORChain has more trade volume in a week than @CurveFinance.

Next is @PancakeSwap https://t.co/xbGkKfFtRU pic.twitter.com/YdPeCZiOQA

— Chad Barraford (@CBarraford) November 13, 2023

THORChain is considered a multichain version of Uniswap as users can swap native Bitcoin (BTC) for Ether (ETH). THORSwap is the name of the decentralized exchange powered by the THORChain protocol.

The platform offers an average annual percentage rate (APR) of nearly 44%, but some liquidity pools offer much higher APRs, such as Bitcoin and RUNE pairs that offer an over 353% APR.

Related: Number of Bitcoin millionaire wallets triples in 2023

Bitcoin advocate Erik Voorhees noted that THORChain processed almost 2%, or $224 million, of overall spot Bitcoin trading volume over the 24 hours between Nov. 11 and 12.

“Principled Bitcoiners should be familiar with THORChain. It is the only market to trade Bitcoin at scale without an intermediary… which is the entire point of Bitcoin,” Voorhees iterated.

Principled Bitcoiners should be familiar with @THORChain

It is the *only market* to trade #Bitcoin at scale without an intermediary… which is the entire point of Bitcoin.

>$200m of native non-wrapped BTC was traded here in the past 24 hrs, permissionlessly.

If you’d like… https://t.co/0WW4QRCo6F

— Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) November 12, 2023