THORChain Introduces Dogecoin Support

Brooks Butler

Jan. 17, 2022

For the first time, Dogecoin is fully supported on a decentralized finance platform.

Shutterstock cover by Robert Way

Key Takeaways

Contributors to THORChain have announced full Dogecoin support and integration.
DOGE holders will now be able to earn yield on their DOGE as well as swap it for other native coins, like Bitcoin.
The positive news follows a wild ride for the THORChain network.

THORChain contributors have announced that the cross-chain liquidity protocol has fully integrated the platform’s features for Dogecoin. THORChain’s native DOGE liquidity pool has gone live, allowing users to trade their DOGE as well as earn yield on their DOGE.

Dogecoin Goes DeFi

Decentralized finance has been made available to DOGE holders.

THORChain contributors announced today the full integration of Dogecoin support. Users of the decentralized, cross-chain liquidity protocol can now swap DOGE for other supported crypto assets as well as earn yield on their DOGE.

For example, DOGE can now be swapped directly for native BTC (as opposed to wrapped BTC), ETH, BNB, BCH, LTC, various stablecoins, and several other Binance Smart Chain or ERC-20 assets via the THORChain liquidity protocol.

Since the THORChain DOGE pool is now open, Dogecoin holders can become liquidity providers, netting them yield on a protocol that helps users minimize their risk of suffering from impermanent loss—the primary risk liquidity providers expose themselves to.

THORChain’s Technical Lead Chad Barraford remarked:

“For years, DOGE has stood still, while DeFi exploded in other ecosystems. Today that changes, as DOGE reaches a new level of self sovereignty by being able to enter and exit without being KYC’ed. This changes the fundamentals of the asset significantly both as a store of value and as a medium of exchange.”

THORChain allows users to swap their native crypto assets (i.e. Bitcoin for Litecoin) or provide liquidity in order to earn yield in one’s native assets. The protocol prevents users from having to “wrap” their coins or tokens—meaning one might use BTC in an Ethereum DeFi protocol without having to wrap it into “wrapped BTC,” or wBTC. Moreover, users do not have to rely on bridges between chains. The network currently supports five chains: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash.

Today’s Dogecoin integration comes after a year fraught with struggle for THORChain. In July 2021, one of the THORChain network protocols, Chaosnet, suffered a $5 million hack, and only one week later, the network’s Bifröst protocol was dealt an $8 million blow. In both instances, the network was paused and the funds lost were refunded via the project’s treasury.

October brought better news, when ETH trading restarted on the protocol and the network’s major decentralized exchange THORSwap closed a $3.75 million token sale raise.

As for Dogecoin, Elon Musk announced Friday that it would be accepted as payment for Tesla merchandise.

Despite today’s news, neither DOGE nor THORChain’s RUNE token has been able to buck the negative price action seen across the crypto markets, the coins down over 5% and 8%, respectively, over the last 24 hours.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH, and several other cryptocurrencies.

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