THORSTARTER 101: What is XRUNE?

Welcome to the second guide in my THORSTARTER 101 series! In this guide, I’ll be explaining all you need to know about XRUNE. I’ll cover its utility, its tokenomics, and how you can purchase it.

tl.dr:

XRUNE is the settlement currency between new projects and THORChain’s active pools. It powers the next generation of THORfi.

It has 3 main functions.

Early access to Thorstarter IDOs

Liquidity Relay for long-tail of crypto

Can be locked for vXRUNE to participate in Thorstarter Governance

Short and Long Tail of Crypto:

XRUNE acts as a settlement currency between the long-tail of crypto and THORChain’s multi-chain liquidity.

Short Tail assets are the large market cap, blue chip cryptos. This means Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB etc. Long Tail by contrast are all the smaller cap coins.

THORChain is designed for Short Tail assets. For a new pool to be added to THORChain, it has to compete with other pending pools to bootstrap liquidity. The pool with the most liquidity gets added. For long tail assets with small amounts of liquidity, this makes it almost impossible to get listed and access THORChain’s multi-chain liquidity. This is where Thorstarter comes in.

Thorstarter allows long tail assets to access THORChain’s liquidity by pairing with XRUNE in a liquidity pool on an external AMM. This works through a liquidity relay.

Liquidity Relay:

Thorstarter acts as a liquidity relay from THORChain’s deep cross-chain liquidity to the long tail of assets. As discussed, getting this liquidity to long tail assets is not as simple listing a new token on THORChain, due to THORChain’s competitive listing process. This is where Thorstarter comes in.

In the diagram, we can see Thorstarter will relay liquidity from the short tail assets on THORChain (left) to the long tail assets (right). The central piece to this mechanism is XRUNE.

There is a deep pool of Rune/XRUNE on THORChain. There will also be a deep pool of XRUNE paired with the new token on an external AMM e.g. Sushi Swap. BTC for example can be swapped to the new token through this relay. This would go through the BTC/Rune and XRUNE/Rune pools on THORChain, and finally through the XRUNE/new token pool on Sushi Swap. Once THORChain is back up and running ERC-20 tokens again, the plan is to integrate this into a simple swap experience for the user.

XRUNE and its role in IDOs:

An IDO is an initial DEX offering. This is when a new token launches on a decentralised exchange like Sushi Swap. XRUNE is your key to participation, granting early access to exciting THORfi and Defi projects.

When a new project IDOs with Thorstarter, a pool of liquidity is seeded using XRUNE and the project’s new token. 50% of the LP tokens (i.e. 50% of pool ownership) are provided to the new project as a grant, and 50% goes to the Thorstarter DAO. When IDO time comes, you will be able to swap XRUNE for the new token.

Different projects choose different sale structures, such as max purchase limits or minimum allocations. These stop whales taking all the tokens. Keep an eye on the Thorstarter socials to find out exactly what sale structure your favourite new project will be using.

Tokenomics:

XRUNE has a total supply of 1 billion. 50% of this was made available on genesis, and the other 50% is vesting over several years. A detailed breakdown of this is shown in the table below.

How to purchase XRUNE:

XRUNE can currently be purchased on Sushi Swap. Once Thorchain restarts ERC-20 chains, it will be available here too.

Sushi Swap

To purchase on Sushi Swap, you will want to load some ETH into a Meta Mask or similar Sushi compatible wallet, and go to https://app.sushi.com/swap

Click “Select a token” and then import XRUNE.

Connect your wallet, and press the swap button. Confirm the transaction and you are done. You have purchased XRUNE!

Thorswap:

Hopefully THORChain will have ERC-20s back up and running in October/November 2021. Then you can purchase XRUNE using all the multi-chain assets listed on THORChain.

I recommend going to app.thorswap.finance. Connect your wallet, for example XDefi wallet, and navigate to “SWAP” on the left.

Once you reach the swap interface, select the currency you are swapping from at the top, and XRUNE just below. Choose the amount of asset you want to swap for XRUNE, and confirm!

(In the picture below it says swap not available. Once ERC-20s are back online on THORChain, this will say SWAP).