2 Years of THORSwap: A Reflection of the Multi-Chain future.

Changing the DeFi game since 2021 💪

Two years ago the world was formally introduced to THORSwap along with a bold question: “is this the death of CEXs?”.

As the successor to BEPSwap on THORChain’s SCCN (single-chain chaosnet), THORSwap would become the world’s first Multichain DEX that provided true permissionless, trustless, and self-custodial cross-chain exchange of native assets.

Since then, we’ve seen exploits to bridges and wrapped assets, not to mention the complete collapse of numerous centralized platforms. This has only served to strengthen our vision of a multi-chain future with no compromises.

Today, THORSwap is the flagship DEX interface of THORChain, processing over US$2.28 Billion in volume over the past 2 years.

To celebrate THORSwap’s birthday, let us reflect on the key milestones and progress made, and discuss what’s in store for the future:

The THORSwap Community

Since our launch, THORSwap has fostered an amazing community of THORChain ecosystem members (affectionately known as THORChads/THORChadettes), DeFi enthusiasts and general Crypto lovers.

Today our official Twitter has 45.4K followers, whilst our main Discord server boasts 17.5K members.

We thank all of the community members, mods and ecosystem friends who’ve been with us since the beginning — there are simply too many to name — but you know who you are, we appreciate your support! 🤜🤛

If you’re reading this, you deserve our thanks too! Thanks for being part of the crew as we journey towards DeFi Valhalla.

$THOR Protocol Token and $vTHOR

THORSwap’s native token $THOR’s Token Generation Event (TGE) on October 20, 2021. Designed with decentralization at heart, almost two-thirds (65%) of $THOR is designed to be owned by the community: community incentives (50%) + public (10%) + airdrop (5%).

As the protocol token of a multi-chain DEX, $THOR was designed to maximize synergy with $RUNE which is designed to optimize and incentivize liquidity. Similarly, $THOR is specifically designed to optimize and incentivize trading activity.

This creates a Trading Black Hole flywheel generating Real Yield for our community into the future.

Further innovation came in the way of an upgrade to $THOR’s staking contract. A year ago, the world was introduced to $vTHOR — one of the earliest uses of the Ethereum ERC-4626 vault token standard. This introduced improved composability and gas efficiency, as well as the beginnings of lowering emissions in favour of Real Yield.

In just under a year, THORSwap has accumulated $945.83K in revenue. 75% of this ($711K USD) has been distributed as $vTHOR fee-sharing reward.

As of 4th May:

• Currently 78.6M $THOR Staked as $vTHOR
• All time high $THOR Staked in USD value ($22.17M)

Steady Real Yield APY in 2023:

January — 3.27% real yield APY
February — 2.14% real yield APY
March — 2.82% real yield APY
April — 3.22 in real yield APY

Community Governance

Recently the THORSwap community has taken bold steps towards community governance by completing the first on-chain governance proposal: [TIP-001] Community Incentives Burn. 130 community members through 8.6M $THOR accounting for 99.53%, voted overwhelmingly in favour of executing the proposal.

True to the core purpose of initial 50% allocation of $THOR supply towards Community Incentives, future proposals will help drive adoption of THORSwap, as governed by the community. The community is empowered to submit and vote on proposals for how best to use this allocation. There are already many ideas on re-allocating emissions to more productive user actions, rewarding swappers, attracting new users, etc.

Flagship THORChain Interface

Since THORSwap’s founding we’ve committed to delivering a best-in-class interface for all THORChain products. We’ve contributed a number of open source code to improve the ecosystem and over the past 2 years we have shipped (often day 1) support for:

• New Chain integrations, including Dogecoin, Terra Luna (RIP), Cosmos Hub, Avalanche C-Chain. No matter the challenge, users have come to expect THORSwap to deliver full featured support for new L1’s on launch.
• THORNode Management
  Providing THORChain Node Operators with detailed statistics and enabling bonding/unbonding/leaving nodes via a slick UI: https://app.thorswap.finance/nodes 💖
• THORYield
  Originally a Discord bot, THORYield has since evolved into a full featured dashboard for LP, Earn, Staking, portfolio tracking and much more available for Web, Android and iOS.

• THORSynths
  THORFi began with THORChain Native Synthetic assets with instant settlement, low gas and no risk of Impermanent Loss. Today anyone can Mint, Redeem, and Swap Synthetic Assets (“Synths”) on THORSwap.
• THORSafe
  A powerful multi-sig wallet interface for THORChain. Improved security, decentralization and utility for users and Node Operators alike: https://app.thorswap.finance/thorsafe

• THORName
  Cross-chain name service simplifies and humanises THORChain wallet addresses to optimize cross-chain compatibility. With currently the only dashboard to register and manage TNS domains: https://app.thorswap.finance/thorname

• Earn (THORChain Savers Vaults)
  One of the biggest innovations on THORChain was the introduction of earning native yield with Savers Vaults with no additional asset exposure or impermanent loss. THORSwap was ready Day 1 with full featured dashboard and UX: https://app.thorswap.finance/earn

• Cross-chain DEX Aggregation and Cross-chain Wallet support — two key features which sets THORSwap apart from other DEXs:

Cross-chain Aggregator of Aggregators

On August 24, 2022, THORSwap truly entered a new era with the launch of a full-featured Ethereum ERC-20 DEX Aggregator. This was soon followed by DEX Aggregation also for Avalanche C-Chain tokens. In total, this introduced around 5,000 new long-tail assets across Ethereum and Avalanche — connecting them with key native gas assets available via THORChain.

As of today, THORSwap taps into deep liquidity from:

• Uniswap V2 + V3
• SushiSwap
• 1Inch (ParaSwap, GMX, Curve)
• 0x Protocol (Matcha),
• KyberSwap
• Pangolin
• TraderJoe
• WooFi (coming soon!)
• PancakeSwap (coming soon!)

Together we now offer DeFi users a single Dapp for finding the best route for their cross-chain needs.

THORSwap will continue to expand these offerings with each chain integration, so that crypto users at large will no longer have to suffer from siloed liquidity and/or forced to rely on Centralized Exchange platforms 💪

Multi-Chain Wallets

We’ve all heard the saying before: Your Keys, Your Crypto. However, to truly enter the Multi-chain future, users needed a way to connect their native chain wallet address to THORChain to perform cross-chain swaps.

From the humble beginnings of keystore files, THORSwap now boasts support for 9 wallet interfaces — including Ledger Hardware Wallet and Trust Wallet for mobile. We’ll continue to add more in the future — to offer DeFi users more choices for self-custody of their funds.

Interface UI/UX and Support

We take pride in constantly improving our interface to lower barriers for DeFi and Crypto at large. We know cross-chain swaps can be daunting at first, but that should never be a deterrence in learning how to take full custody of your funds.

Over the past two years we’ve made constant improvements to our interface — including a key “V2” update for our first birthday which saw the interface completely redesigned from the ground up.

Since then, we’ve continued to address many of the pain points surrounding cross-chain transactions, including a more optimized wallet picker for connecting various combinations of chains and interfaces:

As well as our most recent release: a redesigned Transaction Tracker which provides users with much greater visibility and control over their transactions:

Collaborations

THORSwap has also been an important member of the wider DeFi ecosystem through a track record of collaborations with many key protocols in the THORChain and Ethereum ecosystem. This includes:

• ETH/THOR LP on Sushiswap and $THOR yield farm on Sushi Onsen
• Partnership with Olympus DAO to offer $THOR bonds on Olympus Pro.
• THORStarter partnership for $THOR IDO.
• LP calculator and on-going education efforts with LP University.
• XDEFI wallet for on-going support and IDO allocation for THORChads
• Collaboration with MetaSwagClub for our Web3 merch store,
• Providing more ways to access THORSwap via integration in Magic Store and Mises.
• Partnership with Metaforo to launch a decentralized community governance forum.
• $THOR Integration on HYVE — a leading Web3 Work freelancing marketplace.
• Key partner of the first Cross Chain Expo
• …and more!

Composability is the future of Web3. We’re honored and excited to collaborate and push the boundaries of DeFi 💪

NFTs, Memes and Art

Despite current market conditions, we must not forget the strength and close bonds built over the past 2 years.
From the many hashtags: #THORChads, #RAISETHECAPS, #BRINGTHECHAOS, #BRINGBACKMCCN, #ACTIVATETHESYNTHS, #RUNETOTHEMOON, #VforVTHOR, #BetterThanCEX, #DEXPilled and more, to endless Chris Hemsworth filled GIFs. THORChads have stayed strong through thick and thin.

Currently on hiatus, the THORChadsDAO initiative has hosted THORChad score leaderboard, released a NFT trophy collection, partnered with Vanir Threads to drop THOR Force 1 — the premier physical symbol of the THORChain community. We continue to celebrate each milestone with limited edition merch+NFT collectibles on the merch store: https://thorchads.metaswagclub.com/

Our most recent community event was an Easter Egg Hunt on THORSwap web app. Cross-chain DeFi may be serious business, but we try to have some fun along the way too 👌

THORSwap ⚡ #BetterThanCEX on Twitter: "A joyous Easter to all!🥚🐰Celebrate by joining our Easter Egg Hunt - we've hidden 50 Eggs on https://t.co/IhH9SnZixr, find one & win 1K $THOR!👀If you find an egg, simply click it and enter wallet address. Your reward will be airdropped next Tuesday. No cheating allowed! pic.twitter.com/479pQIe6If / Twitter"

A joyous Easter to all!🥚🐰Celebrate by joining our Easter Egg Hunt - we've hidden 50 Eggs on https://t.co/IhH9SnZixr, find one & win 1K $THOR!👀If you find an egg, simply click it and enter wallet address. Your reward will be airdropped next Tuesday. No cheating allowed! pic.twitter.com/479pQIe6If

We aim to work with the community to host more fun web3 activities in the future, slowly building towards the vision of a THORChads Metaverse.

Decentralization

THORSwap is committed towards decentralization across all areas of the protocol. Steps taken include:

• Multi-sig model for treasury management
• Reducing dependencies on centralized parties by switching our Midgard to bare metal architecture
• Improving community governance through establishment of a decentralized community governance forum for idealisation and feedback on proposals
• Snapshot on-chain vote for community governance
• Dashboards and reports for token circulation and allocation
• Open sourcing and contributing to open source code bases.
• Transitioning away from centralized cloud services

More steps will be taken as we continue to mature as a protocol that is resilient, transparent and secure. We welcome all crypto users to join our community, not simply trust — but verify our efforts 🤝

SwapKit

Finally, we arrive at the biggest and arguably most important development in THORSwap’s history to date: the arrival of SwapKit — our own suite of cross-chain services providing native cross-chain trading, DEX aggregation, yield, and analytics tools for everyone.

We’ve taken everything learnt so far, from SCCN BepSwap days to becoming a full featured Aggregator of Aggregators and distilled it into a simple yet powerful API/SDK techstack.

Components forming the architecture of THORSwap SwapKit, excluding external dependencies from the THORChain ecosystem include:

• SwapKit API
• Token List Service
• Transaction Tracker
• Partner dashboard
• Ethereum Aggregator Contracts
• Avalanche Aggregator Contracts
• SwapKit-SDK: streamlines integration of services and interaction with smart contracts.

With SwapKit devs and protocols can be equipped with a powerful tool to build truly Multi-Chain dApps and products. Meanwhile each integration brings broader user reach, increasing the flywheel of more volume and better liquidity.

More information will be shared in the future, check out SwapKit Dev Docs and Get in touch if you’re interested to learn more!

THORChain on Twitter: "It's never been easier to go MultichainEthereum dApps now have instant access to integrating BTC wallets like @ledger or @xdefi_wallet and more without any of the complexityGet started with @THORSwap's new SwapKit ⚡️ https://t.co/zXi0cDuA9F / Twitter"

It's never been easier to go MultichainEthereum dApps now have instant access to integrating BTC wallets like @ledger or @xdefi_wallet and more without any of the complexityGet started with @THORSwap's new SwapKit ⚡️ https://t.co/zXi0cDuA9F

The Multi-Chain Future and beyond

Phew! A massive thank you from us if you made it this far! It’s been a huge trip down memory lane as we reflect up on all we’ve achieved and shipped over the past two years. From DeFi summer to Bear market winter, we’ve never stopped BUIDLing, but more importantly — we wouldn’t be here today without YOU, our fellow believers.

To quote ourselves: At THORSwap our vision is to “Make Cross-Chain Finance Easy.”

The road ahead isn’t easy — but the destination hasn’t changed at all: simplify and grow cross-chain volume, offer the best Decentralized no-compromise multi-chain dApp and unlock financial sovereignty for all.

We’re not on this journey alone, in the future, SwapKit will allow many partners in Web3 to join us and truly challenge the status quo.

The Multi-Chain future is NOW.

We’re just EARLY.

Onwards THORChads! 🤜⚡🤛

About THORSwap

THORSwap is the leading decentralized exchange (DEX) powered by multi-chain THORChain. Perform cross-chain swaps in a permissionless, trustless, and non-custodial manner.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/thorswap
Discord: https://discord.gg/thorswap
Website: https://thorswap.finance
THORSwap App: https://app.thorswap.finance
THORSwap Docs: https://docs.thorswap.finance
Telegram Announcement: https://t.me/thorswap_ann
Community YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/THORSwapCommunity
Merch Store: https://thorchads.metaswagclub.com
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