Introduction
This guide has been designed for easy consumption by those wanting to learn more about THORChain. The level of detail and amount of information is intentionally low to maximise understanding for those without deep knowledge of blockchain. For those looking for rich information please refer to the whitepapers which are available on github.
THORChain is a liquidity protocol designed to connect all blockchain assets in a marketplace of liquidity through cross-chain bridges and continuous liquidity pools secured by economically incentivised validators.
By leveraging Tendermint, Cosmos-SDK and Threshold Signature Schemes, THORChain is able to remain chain-agnostic, favoring no specific asset or blockchain and able to scale massively without sacrificing security.
THORChain enables users to swap between digital assets on almost any blockchain in a trustless & permissionless setting, with low fees and at market prices. Liquidity is provided by stakers who earn fees on swaps, turning their unproductive assets into productive assets in a non-custodial manner. Market prices are maintained through the ratio of assets in pools which can be arbitraged by traders to restore correct market prices.
The project was conceptualised in 2018 where the majority of R&D was undertaken. Development commenced in June 2019 with THORCHain's first go-to-market product BEPSwap set for release in August 2019 and mainnet slated for 2020.
BEPSwap is THORChain's first go-to-market product using around 50% of THORChain technology to enable BEP2 swaps on Binance Chain. BEPSwap will be debuted in late August 2019.
BEPSwap differs from THORChain in that staking & swapping takes place exclusively on Binance Chain; accordingly there are no cross chain bridges. A Cosmos powered statechain simply observes transactions into liquidity pools, calculates the swap and sends out transactions on the other side. 11 validators secure assets in the pool , with 8/11 (t of n) validators signing threshold signatures (TSS) to process transactions.
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