Asgard Awaits — THORChain must cross the chasm

THORChain

2021-06-24 — 6 min read

Asgard Awaits — THORChain to cross the chasm

Overview

Mainnet will be achieved when the network achieves its stated goal of being a decentralised exchange:

Over 40 active nodes (sharded Asgard vault)
30m RUNE is bonded (equivalent to the maximum seen on SCCN)
15m RUNE is pooled (equivalent to the maximum seen on SCCN)
5 Chains are stable, with no major bugs for previous 30 days
SCCN BEPSwap IL Protection is paid out
SCCN is Ragnaröked (or close to being)
Hardware Wallet support
Nodes are granted mimir control

At this rate, this is likely to be achieved sometime in the next 6–8 weeks at the earliest.

Bonded/Pooled KPIs

This has been set to equal the highest seen on SCCN — it’s the point at which MCCN officially becomes bigger than its trial version.

Wallet Support

There are over 5 different web interfaces, two mobile interfaces, and two desktop apps that support THORChain.
In addition, Ledger support has been added (dev mode) and currently accessed on THORSwap. Ledger will also be integrated in the official ASGARDEX desktop app prior to mainnet.

Mimir

Originally it was intended to purge mimir, however with the aggressive follow-on THORFi roadmap it is likely that mimir will be retained until Planned Obsolescence. This allows new THORFi features to each undergo safe launches by setting and raising caps. To swing the balance, nodes will be given mimir control at the same time, allowing them to override the system defaults. Mimir can not access funds, nor stop funds being sent out. It only tweaks system parameters.

Is it decentralised?

At 40 nodes, the network can lay a credible claim to being adequately decentralised. Firstly, the team or seed investors are not yet vested thus do not run any nodes with their locked allocations. The current set of nodes are run by the community with their own RUNE.

Secondly, RUNE has been circulating in public markets for two years to date. There has been ample time for RUNE to be distributed and the network to decentralise.

Lastly SCCN has been running successfully for 11 months. If even SCCN was centralised, there would have been multiple warning signs. Many in the public sphere have tried to challenge THORChain’s decentralisation, but to date no real assertion has been made to the contrary.

RUNE Unlock

As part of achieving mainnet, RUNE allocated to the original team and seed investors will undergo an unlock. This amounts to 10% (team) and ~5% (seed).

Originally this was supposed to be unlocked in October 2019, but the project made a decision to burn 50% of the supply AND lock tokens until “mainnet”.

Over the last 18 months, over 67% of the seed allocation was bought back from original seed investors and sold to new investors at a higher cost basis. The remaining 33% was unable to be bought back.

In addition, around 30% of the team tokens was sold under the same vesting schedule to newer investors at market prices. This effectively means team tokens have been sold for the benefit of the treasury, reducing the team’s allocation by around 15m tokens (from 50m down to 35m RUNE). This has further reduced the team’s ownership from 10% down to 7%.

Unlock Schedule

The schedule starts at mainnet and runs for 12 months. Prior to distribution, locked BNB.RUNE will be migrated to native THOR.RUNE. The unlocks will happen in reverse cost-basis with team allocations occurring last. Since the vast majority of the RUNE is unlocking to long-term aligned holders, it is likely to end up in Node Bonds or LP positions (as intended).

Achieving Planned Obsolescence

From “mainnet” the team and commumity have an estimated 12 months to:

Roll out the THORFi roadmap

Work with the community to connect an additional 15 chains

Achieve maximum interface adoption

Decentralise the Seed Service

Hand over core protocol, midgard and bifrost development

Graduate community projects

Hand over the treasury

Achieve Planned Obsolescence

THORFi:

Cross-chain Liquidity (done)
Synths
Cross-chain Savings Account
Cross-chain Lending
Composite Assets

Bonus:

THORNames
Stablecoins
Improvements to Liquidity/Savings/Lending

20 Chains

THORChain is designed for the short-tail. The team estimate that ~20 chains can be safely connected at once. To achieve 20 chains, the team are working with the community to document, supervise and onboard several devs who can become subject matter experts at the bridging technology. 20 chains is ambitious, and ultimately up to the community to step up to the challenge of building and maintaining them.

Interfaces

Once mainnet is achieved, the team will aggressively target interface adoption. There will likely be bounties for this purpose. THORChain should be in every major cross-chain wallet by the end of the year.

Seed Service

The seed service is currently the only centralised service — holding a server that scans and points to active nodes. This should be decentralised in a form of a Web3 smart contract.

Graduate Community Projects

All community projects are in some way funded by THORChain. XDefi has successfully graduated and is now self-sufficient. It is the goal to help each community project graduate from funding and become self-sufficient. They will be steered to seek their own investment or begin charging affiliate fees.

Planned Obsolescence

Ideally the following is achieved, however these are outside the control of the team and developer community. They are ultimately up to product-market-fit.

100 nodes bonding 100m RUNE
50m RUNE pooled
$1bn TVL
5/5 THORFi features
20 chains

Hand Over the Treasury

The team have responsibly grown the treasury from $1.5m to over $100m today. However it is centrally managed, such as the monthly pay run to community and team, as well as deciding and managing grants.

It is the intent that this is decentralised by finding 5–10 community teams to split up the treasury and take over the role. They will be charged to manage the treasury as the original team did. These teams will be highly curated, since the cost of corruption is low.

In addition, it is likely that some form of protocol-level dev treasury is formed, where RUNE is allocated then discharged in the form of on-chain grants. But it is not yet decided how this will be achieved.

Beyond

THORChain is designed to run for decades, hopefully much longer. It is revenue-producing on Day 1, such that it can sustain itself for perpetuity. It pays its own security and liquidity budget. It is fully decentralised, with no centralised control.

The vision of THORChain is that it can achieve and sustain a $100bn+ financial protocol. Every Node Operator, every community dev and every LP should also hold this vision. Why stop at $1bn when it can scale to $100bn?

The team are ensuring that it has the best chance of success, but ultimately have to hand over for it to realise this. It cannot achieve beyond $1bn if it is at all in any way centralised.

There is much work to do, and not a lot of time to do it, but with focus — Asgard awaits.