Q4 2024 Report
1 October 2024–31 December 2024
Q4’23 Report | Q1’24 Report | Q2’24 Report | Q3’24 Report
A Look at Q4 2024 Metrics
Dashboard | More Stats | Even More Stats
- Total USD Volume: $13.9b
- Highest 24h Volume: $334m
- Change in Total Liquidity: $503m to $259m (-48%)
- Liquidity Fees Collected: $5.28m
- Affiliate Earnings: $3.92m
- LP Earnings Breakdown: 27.83% Liquidity Fees — 72.17% Block Rewards
Top 5 Swap Routes by USD Volume
- BTC <> RUNE — $2,608,822,155
- ETH <> RUNE — $1,634,438,617
- BTC <> ETH — $1,571,204,347
- ETH.USDT <> RUNE — $1,089,865,847
- BTC <> ETH.USDT — $1,058,953,858
Top 5 Swap Routes by Liquidity Fees (USD)
- BTC <> RUNE — $956,030
- ETH <> RUNE — $601,354
- BTC <> ETH — $536,004
- ETH.USDT <> RUNE — $465,265
- BTC <> USDT — $341,514
Top Affiliate THORNames by USD volume
- “ti” — $634,854,733 in 67,207 swaps
- “td” — $129,082,321 in 56,138 swaps
- “t” — $634,854,733 in 11,257 swaps
- “dx” — $158,906,187 in 5,906 swaps
- “rg” — $16,372,907 in 5,623 swaps
- “wr” — $211,773,026 in 3,861 swaps
- “ss” — $201,423,556 in 3,925 swaps
- “dcf” — $12,463,176 in 3,801 swaps
- “tr” — $19,686,491 in 1,596 swaps
- “te” — $17,476,535 in 1,513 swaps
- “ej” — $3,692,845 in 1,006 swaps
New Integrations
- Ledger Live (via SwapKit)
- Bitget Wallet
- Gem Wallet
What’s new to THORChain in Q4 2024?
Min Swap Fee to 8bps (16bps for a double swap)
The nodes voted to change the minimum liquidity fee to 8bps (or 0.08%). This means that a L1 to L1 swap will always be charged at least 16bps (or 0.16%) in liquidity fees. The streaming swap slippage target also matches the minimum slip fee, meaning that almost all swaps on THORChain are charged 16bps as a fee.
Multiple Affiliates
You can now specify multiple thornames in a swap memo and pay affiliate fees to multiple parties. This can allow affiliate fee splitting integrators to allow for seamless revenue sharing. THORSwap released an affiliate program that allows users to get a piece of the affiliate fees they refer to the interface. This is an important upgrade to build the pipeline to refer new users to THORChain and allow integrators to do business more easily.
Incentive Pendulum Changes
The incentive pendulum has been modified to its original form, undoing the change to using Effective Security rather than Total Security. For the past months, THORChain only counts the RUNE from the bottom ⅔ of nodes as part of the security budget. With this change, all RUNE from all nodes is now considered, which pushed the incentive pendulum dramatically in favor of Liquidity Pools which earned 75% of all rewards in Q4 2024.
Reduce Churn Migrate Rounds
THORChain migrates its funds in multiple rounds, rather than all at once. The number of rounds was decreased from 5 rounds to 2 rounds. This will save the network significantly on gas costs for churning vaults.
5% System Income Burn
The nodes voted and passed a vote that burns 5% of the system income. The RUNE burned through this method is removed from the maximum possible supply of 500m. You can view a live feed of the burn on THORChain.net and RUNE Tools.
Cosmos SDK v0.50
THORChain’s Cosmos SDK version was updated to v0.50. This was a required update to enable future functionality such as CosmWasm smart contracts on the App Layer, IBC, and other Cosmos SDK features. See what his means for THORChain in the V3 Release article.
Cosmos Upgrade Module
THORChain performed its first upgrades using the Cosmos Upgrade module. This module allows THORChain to hard fork easily and synchronously. Some upgrades require hard forks to prevent consensus failure, so this tooling will help with future upgrades where it is required.
Cosmos Bank Sends
THORChain added the default Cosmos MsgSend. Previously, THORChain used a custom MsgSend that requires integrators to use a custom implementation rather than a generic Cosmos fork.
MsgSend Triggers MsgDeposit
Functionality now exists where a MsgSend to the Bank address “thor1v8ppstuf6e3x0r4glqc68d5jqcs2tf38cg2q6y” will be handled like a MsgDeposit. MsgDeposit is the message type that’s needed to trigger an action like bonding or making a swap. MsgSend is just used to transfer tokens from one address to another. This will allow any wallet that can send RUNE easily able to access all of the functions of THORChain, like swapping.
Affiliate Fee collected after swap
Affiliate fees are now collected after the swap is completed, not before. This solves an issue where users still pay the affiliate fee even if the swap was refunded.
Secured Assets
Secured Assets are the primitive created as an evolution of Trade Assets which will be used in the App Layer. Secured Assets are Cosmos Bank type coins, meaning they can be held in any THOR address. Secured Assets are 1:1 backed by the native asset counterpart and secured by THORChain.
Roadmap — What to expect in the future
A number of new features are being worked on by Nine Realms and other protocol developers. Some may change in design or scope before being released to THORChain mainnet. Notably, this quarter marks a pivot to focusing on THORChain App Layer to remove risk from the base protocol layer.
Base Integration
Base may be the next major chain connected to THORChain. Nine Realms team is working on delivering to mainnet.
Solana Chain Integration
Solana requires additional background work that must be completed, since it uses a different encryption type (EdDSA) compared to other THORChain connected chains (ECDSA). The Nine Realms team has been working on the architectural changes needed to support Solana and other chains using this encryption type like TON.
Scale Back THORFi — De-risk the Base Layer in favor of the App Layer
The creation of loans has been stopped. Savers yield scaling has decreased slightly after a vote, and there are further active proposals to tune down the synthetic asset utilization of the network by scaling down the Savers program by dropping yields. This is part of a coordinated effort to de-risk the base layer of the protocol and its liquidity providers. So far, nodes have been in support of these changes and may continue to scale down THORFi.
THORChain App Layer
THORChain will add a CosmWasm execution environment known as the App Layer. Previously, new primitives had to be added to the base layer of THORChain, creating unnecessary security risk. With a CosmWasm execution environment, new protocols can be built using THORChain’s liquidity without adding additional risk to the base layer. Teams like Kujira and Levana have already stepped up to signal their intent to build protocols on the App Layer like Lending, Orderbooks, and Perps. The move to the App Layer will simplify the base layer of THORChain, making it more predictable and secure, without sacrificing the innovative products that THORChain wants to offer. Teams interested in building on the App Layer should get in touch with Nine Realms now and get involved in the Developer Discord.
IBC Connection
THORChain will use IBC to bring additional assets into the App Layer, adding additional liquidity that can be used by the network and greatly increasing the number of chains that THORChain is connected to.
Exporting RUNE or other THORChain assets out via IBC is a separate discussion for a future date.
Active Yield
Part of an active campaign to make the Liquidity Provision experience better on THORChain. Active yield will accrue yield outside of the liquidity position, rather than automatically compounding yield earned and subjecting it to impermanent loss. Yield will also be able to be “streamed” to the Layer 1 asset of your choice at regular intervals.
Ethereum Router V5
Upgrades to the Ethereum Router for transferOutAndCall, as well as adding support for Batched Outbounds.
Where to get more information about THORChain?
- Twitter Spaces — subscribe on RSS or wherever you get your podcasts
- THORChain University — educational content, monthly posts, & discord server
- THORChain University Updates — monthly update articles
- GrassRoots Crypto — update videos
Community
To keep up to date, please monitor community channels, particularly Telegram and X:
Website | Documentation | X | Telegram Community | Telegram Alerts | Community Discord | Developer Discord | Explorer | RuneScan | Reddit | Gitlab | Medium | Linktree | Thorcharts
