THORChain’s native token has plummeted 20% in the past 24 hours, wiping off recent gains as the rest of the market also bleeds.
The price of THORChain (RUNE) changed hands around $1.20, dipping sharply after hitting highs above $1.60.
RUNE faced rejection at the resistance level that has previously proved tough for bulls on multiple occasions year-to-date.
Notably, the dump from highs of $1.63 for RUNE coincides with the sharp sell-off that sent Bitcoin (BTC) below $80,000 early Friday.
However, the THORChain network was also seeing increased chatter as one of its top developers announced an exit.
What is THORChain?
THORChain is a decentralised exchange providing for native Bitcoin (BTC) cross-chain swaps.
Its decentralised finance infrastructure is available across several blockchain networks.
Meanwhile, its cross-chain asset rails and liquidity are accessible for industry players including Trust, Ledger, OKX, and Bitget.
As the platform allows for anonymous cross-chain swaps, it brings to the fore benefits of decentralization in liquidity management.
However, there are concerns that threat actors are misusing these platforms.
This has resulted in considerable discussions around crypto crime an what can be done.
Chainflip, for instance, instituted an upgrade to block blacklisted addresses following the $1.4 billion Bybit hack.
RUNE price falls as THORChain developer Pluto exits
On February 27, THORChain developer Pluto announced he was leaving the DEX protocol.
While he did not expound on the reason for his exit, it comes amid significant chatter around hackers’ use of the platform.
In particular, the North Korean-backed Lazarus Group has used THORChain to launder huge sums of its $1.4 billion Bybit hack funds.
**Moving on from THORChain**
Validators, developers, members of the community: effectively immediately, I will no longer be contributing to THORChain. I will remain available to Nine Realms as long as I am needed and to ensure an orderly hand-off of my responsibilities. It has…
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Pluto, who had worked with the THORChain for four years, reportedly left after a failed attempt to block the hacker’s transactions.
The developer had supported efforts to prevent illicit funds flowing through the platform.
“TCB”, a THORChain validator, confirmed this via X.
“As I mentioned yesterday, I will also see myself out if we don’t rapidly adopt a solution to stop NK flows, so this will likely be one of my last posts on the TC subject,” TCB noted.
North Korea-backed Lazarus Group exploited a vulnerability with the Safe wallet to loot over 400k Ether (ETH) from Bybit.
While the laundering that followed used platforms such as eXch and Chainflip, a significant amount of the swaps to BTC happened on THORChain.
Blockchain intelligence and analytics platform Arkham noted that as of February 27, the hackers had laundered more than $240 million via THORChain.
ALERT: LAZARUS LAUNDERING THROUGH THORCHAIN – MINIMUM $240M SO FAR
Over $240M of ETH has been sent through Thorchain by Lazarus-tagged wallets on Arkham.
These funds have mainly been swapped for native BTC.
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These transactions helped boost transaction volume on THORChain.
At one point in the past 24 hours, the volume hit over $1.1 billion.
It stood around $790 million at the time of writing, down more than 22%.
Notably, the platform recorded much lower counts for daily transaction volume before the spike seen in recent days.
RUNE, the native governance token, has dipped in the past 24 hours amid these developments.
At its peak in May 2021, RUNE price rose to an all-time high above $21.26.
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