First published 23 June 2022, as the project announced mainnet. The token had existed for years as an IOU on other chains. Expanded in October 2026 so a swap is not described as a bridge receipt you hold, and so the old Ethereum token is not described as still redeemable. THORChain is a network for swapping native coins. You send bitcoin on Bitcoin and receive ether on Ethereum, or the reverse, without taking a wrapped token home. RUNE is the coin of this network. The cap is 500 million. What is Bitcoin, in plain language? is one of the chains it talks to. Ethereum without the jargon is another. RUNE is not either of them.
The project started as research in 2018. Chaosnet, a version that used real money, opened in April 2021. Native RUNE, the coin on THORChain itself, came with that network. Mainnet was announced in June 2022. Before that, RUNE on Ethereum and on BNB Chain was a claim on the native coin. In July 2022 node operators turned on a kill switch. The rate for turning those IOUs into native RUNE fell over the following year until it hit zero. An old token that was not upgraded is not native RUNE. A site that says it can still upgrade it, and asks for a recovery phrase, is not the 2022 window.
The vault is not your wallet
Every pool has RUNE on one side and another asset on the other. Nodes bond RUNE. The native coins sit in vaults those nodes control. A vault is not your wallet. If the nodes fail, the coins in the vault are the ones at risk. In July 2021 the network halted more than once after bugs in the contracts that watched Ethereum. Users were later told reserves would cover them. A halt is not itself a refund. This page will not describe the bugs. A bridge is extra software, not a tunnel. This design avoids a wrapped token and still concentrates coins in a vault.
A swap is an instruction you attach to a payment on the chain you are leaving. A wrong instruction is a wrong payment. This page will not write that instruction. The protocol’s fee is denominated in RUNE and comes out of the trade. An exchange balance is an IOU, not a wallet. A THORChain address starts with thor1. An Ethereum address will not receive native RUNE. The wrong network is still the wrong city. Nothing here is an instruction to swap, to bond, or to buy RUNE.
