In mid-2018 the THORChain team began research on decentralized exchanges and the continuous liquidity concept. Private investors and founders committed funds to the project in order to build a testnet and deliver the vision.
In early 2019 the THORChain team and their partner Swish Labs applied for and received an Interchain grant to build bridge tooling for Ethereum and Cosmos blockchains. The bridge tooling is one part of the many pieces of technology that need to be built for the project, including the base layer of the chain, as well as its layer 2 (the Flash Network).
The bridge tooling and the associated grant is covered here:
https://medium.com/thorchain/phase-1-pegged-zone-for-ethereum-shipped-570b15dc6329
Distribution of Rune
The native token of the chain is the Rune Token and is used by the protocol for security, liquidity and governance.
Security
Validators to the chain perform many functions, such as processing blocks, managing bridges and securing assets on the chain. To prevent sybil attacks and hostile take-overs, a Proof-of-Stake economic system is proposed. Validators must acquire and bond the base asset in order to form part of the consensus set. This means it is difficult to take over the network.
Liquidity
The breakthrough of THORChain is its concept of using incentivised continuous liquidity pools that allow all assets to be linked together. These pools function as source of a trustless and manipulation-resistant price feeds which allow advanced financial features to be supported, such as derivatives, lending and futures. It also means the bridges to external chains can be made much safer.
Governance
Another important aspect of the Rune token is to allow token holders to participate in on-chain governance, allowing the protocol to be upgraded over time and managed effectively. Anyone can delegate their tokens to a validator to cost on-chain votes.
Wide Distribution
The most important aspect for the Rune Token is that it is widely distributed both before and after the mainnet is launched. Airdrops, DEX offerings and on-chain liquidity emissions are all planned to achieve this.
Binance DEX Initial DEX Offering (IDO)
Noting the success of the Raven Protocol Initial DEX Offering on 17 June 2019, THORChain is actively investigating a similiar distibution.
To improve on Raven’s model, the team are considering adjusting the sale model so that it achieves a wider distribution over a longer period of time with DEX users.
The IDO is currently being scoped out but it will likely occur in July 2019. The team welcome all input into the design of the IDO.
If you would like to know more and be kept up to date please join the telegram community: https://t.me/thorchain_org
Join the Community
Be sure to check out the official community channels for updates around the upcoming Rune distribution:
- Github: https://github.com/thorchain
- Medium: https://medium.com/thorchain
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/thorchain_org
- Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/thorchain
- Telegram Community: https://t.me/thorchain_org
- Telegram Announcements: https://t.me/thorchain
Resources:
- THORChain Whitepaper
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