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

cointelegraph.com:

Native asset settlement protocol THORChain has recorded the third-largest trading volume among non-centralized 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

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, 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 THORChain