Podcast Ep.256—Swap Volume Decreases but Users Increase... Thorchain Accelerates Expansion of "Multichain Liquidity"

In the third quarter of 2025, THORChain, a multichain decentralized exchange (DEX), made significant progress in usability and technical scalability. “Growth in unique swap users,” “TRON integration,” and “introduction of an on-chain oracle” are the three core changes that drew the most attention this period.

According to the THORChain protocol report released by Messari Research, although the price of RUNE fell by 14.9%, the total value locked (TVL) in RUNE terms rose from 54.9 million RUNE to 66.5 million RUNE, an increase of 20.9%. Even with the decline in RUNE price, the scale of liquidity assets held continued to grow, which is interpreted as a sign of market trust in THORChain’s fundamentals and liquidity depth.

Swap trading volume dropped 42.1% quarter-on-quarter, recording $4.49 billion, but the average daily number of unique swap users increased from 1,100 to 1,332, up 16.9%. This indicates that despite a “policy-driven decline in trading volume,” the user base is becoming more active, affirming THORChain’s utility as backend infrastructure. In particular, even though metrics such as collaborative earnings and new address growth showed slight fluctuations, a 14% increase in daily active addresses supports this conclusion.

On the technical side, TRON integration was the highlight. With native swaps for TRX and USDT now enabled, the THORChain ecosystem can tap into TRON’s $320 billion liquidity pool. TRON is currently the world’s largest USDT issuer and the highest-volume non-EVM network, further reinforcing THORChain’s multichain scalability and strategic importance. In fact, with this integration, THORChain has now built infrastructure supporting direct swaps between Bitcoin and TRON-based USDT.

An architecture to provide accurate on-chain pricing has also been established. In Q3, THORChain introduced an Enshrined Oracle, designed to embed real-time USD exchange rate data directly into each block at the consensus layer. This not only eliminates reliance on external oracles and reduces the risk of price feed manipulation, but will also be essential infrastructure for upcoming derivatives and perpetual contracts exchanges.

Performance improvements and chain expansion are planned for Q4. The main roadmap includes: “no memo swaps” that enable asset swaps without connecting standalone web wallets, limit order functionality, a shift to “2-second block times” to boost block speed, and Solana integration. In particular, mainnet support for Solana will enable apps like Rujira to offer perpetual products on a high-performance chain, and an opt-in feature for node operators supporting rare chains is also in testing.

Within THORChain’s revenue structure, 5% is automatically used to burn RUNE, resulting in two consecutive quarters of declining total supply and a deflationary trend. In Q3, total protocol revenue reached $3.6 million, and the report also noted a trailing price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 11.21, suggesting THORChain is undervalued compared to traditional infrastructure projects.

Ultimately, the third quarter is seen as a period of solid growth in user metrics, technical infrastructure, and chain expansion preparedness, despite the headline decline in trading volume. For the question, “Can it overcome the growing cross-chain bridge risks between crypto networks and the limitations of centralized oracles?” THORChain is delivering answers grounded in real-world function and utility.