A chart recently posted to Twitter/X by House of Chimera shows that the number of unique swappers is gradually increasing on Thorchain, the cross-chain decentralized exchange where people can trade one cryptocurrency for another without creating an account.

https://x.com/HouseofChimera/status/1791107770982486147

It's just the most recent statistic that demonstrates a continuing trend of people moving away from centralized exchanges (CEXs) like Coinbase and Binance to decentralized exchanges (DEXs) like Uniswap and Thorchain.

As regulators come down on CEXs, more and more people will seek decentralized alternatives such as Thorchain. In this article we pose the question, could cross-chain DEXs be the future of cryptocurrency exchange?

RUNE Token

Thorchain is powered by the RUNE token, which users deposit along with an equivalent dollar amount of Bitcoin, Litecoin, or some other supported cryptocurrency, in order to provide liquidity to the exchange.

Only people who wish to provide liquidity and earn rewards need to obtain the RUNE token. Those who simply want to swap from one crypto for another do not require it. The value of RUNE has varied wildly over the past few years, but appears to be trending upwards over the long-run.

RUNE has been recovering since its high of around $20 back in the bull run of 2021. Since then, the token languished throughout the 2022 bear market before climbing to ~$10 in the first quarter of 2024, only to settle at its most recent price of ~$5.

Thanks to the success of Thorchain in terms of its value and growth in usage, it is being innovated upon by sister projects like Maya Protocol, Chainflip and Serai DEX, which also provide (or are going to provide) permissionless swaps between distinct blockchains.

The question is, does the growth of cross-chain DEXs like Thorchain portend the future of cryptocurrency exchange, or will we be operating within blockchain ecosystems that have been engineered to be interoperable from the ground-up, like Cosmos and Polkadot, which have been constantly building in the background?

After all, a lot of up-and-coming DePIN, RWA (real world assets), and AI projects have been building on their own application-specific blockchains in the aforementioned ecosystems, while leaving the experimental Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains behind.

Regulators Incoming?

Thorchain has been used to swap stolen funds from one cryptocurrency into another, which has certainly captured the attention of the authorities. Despite the potential for this type of inappropriate usage, there is no privacy on Thorchain, and all trades are completely open and traceable on its transparent ledger.

In summary, the number of unique Thorchain users continues to grow, along with its successor sister chains, which are hard at work to integrate more distinct blockchains, and enable more permissionless swaps. At the same time, there are innovative projects building within interoperable blockchain ecosystems where the majority of the volume could end up in the long-run.

If you learned something from this article, be sure to check out my other posts on crypto and finance here on the HIVE blockchain. You can also follow me on InLeo for more frequent updates.

Until next time..

Resources

Thorchain Image [1]