Thorchain’s RUNE Appreciates 170% and DeFi TVL Grows 100% Over Last Month, Here’s Why

RUNE, the native cryptocurrency of THORChain has seen strong price appreciation over the last three weeks despite heavy volatility in the crypto space. The RUNE price has appreciated 173% despite the broader market correction since February 24, the day Russia announced its invasion into Ukraine.

Furthermore, the total-value-locked (TVL) by RUNE in decentralized finance (DeFi) has surged by 100% over the last month and a half. Built atop Cosmos, THORChain provides cross-chain liquidity by trading native crypto assets in a decentralized system.

It also differed from other DEXs by allowing users to retain the custody of their assets through its swapping mechanism. All assets swapper on the THORChain blockchain route through RUNE by using the platform’s native liquidity pools. This mechanism ensures that there’s constant buying pressure for RUNE.

Reason Behind the Surge in RUNE DeFi TVL

Popular crypto analyst Miles Deutscher also explains the reason behind the 100% surge in DeFi TVL. He writes:

The launch of synthetic assets trading has been a major catalyst for this increase. “Synthetic assets are derivatives that track the price of another asset.” The launch of this feature enables cheaper and faster swaps for users. Thor’s Chaosnet enables synthetic assets to be traded with no IL and with single asset exposure.

This mechanism will allow users to hold and trade a representative of an L1 asset faster and at a lower cost. This helps in boosting the network usage which ultimately helps to boost the DeFi TVL.

Another major development is that LUNA’s UST integration is coming to the THORchain in the next week. Thus, post the hardfork, LUNA, UST and RUNE could be easily functional on the THORChain allowing users to swap from L1 to L1 trustlessly directly through their non-custodial wallets, without using wrapped assets.

Both, RUNE and LUNA’s tokenomics will play a crucial role which will help in strong price appreciation for both the crypto.