1/ The devs behind $RUNE are an anonymous team and the coin is shilled by pseudonymous Twitter accounts. Rather than buying bags for the sake of buying bags, I wanted to actually DMOR.

Here’s my counter-shill in an attempt to restore some balance in the world.

2/ Back in June THORChain released a demo of their ERC-20 cross-chain swapping contract. I tried it and it didn’t work (it was “taken down”). But before realising it was taken down, I peeked at the code to see what was going on… https://twitter.com/thorchain_org/status/1276293916220772354

3/ This demo was just a contract that received transactions and emitted an event. That code could be written up in minutes. To THORChains defence, the value is in what the THORNodes do with that event than it is in the Solidity (more on that in a sec).

4/ But still, I was a little perplexed by the code. I have a lot of respect for @DegenSpartan, @Arthur_0x et al but to see them tout RUNE as the next big thing when the code looked like this was pretty stunning.

5/ I know a bit of Solidity. No training, just 50-100 hours messing around with contracts because I believe that knowing some Solidity/Vyper will help you make better calls. So out of a nerdy frustration for how oddly the contract was written, I wrote up some simplifications...

I handed these to the THORChain team. Credit to them that they took it on the chin and were mega humble in merging the code. This is definitely an attribute of $RUNE that I admire. https://twitter.com/0xEther/status/1276445195492642816

6/ I’ve since been curious about THORNode. Unfortunately I’m not able to get it working to dive deeper; it throws errors but admittedly I may just be doing something wrong. However, that does beg a serious question - is anyone shilling $RUNE actually running THORNode?

7/ Ignoring the software and looking at the promise of $RUNE as if we lived in some utopia where visions were translated flawlessly to code; what is the actual value prop of blockchain interoperability? There is no meaningful demand for interoperability outside of BTC <-> ETH.

8/ Oh, and speaking of $BTC <-> $ETH. That shit is already live, working and improving. So THORChain is building for a future where lots of other chains exist and users need to move assets between them; this is a giant unknown.

9/ $RUNE is on Binance Chain and up until recently traded predominantly on Binance DEX with ~$500K daily volume. 20 holders hold 75% of the token supply. I'm sure there are vesting periods and promises to release coins. But that's what you're buying into. GL.

10/. The RUNE <> Binance romance is honestly confusing. We know that’s a sub-optimal way to launch a coin if you’re interested in distribution and price discovery. There’s been no mention of a deal between the two. So what gives? https://twitter.com/0xEther/status/1255515769351307264

Fin/ RUNE is rarely criticised on CT so I’m guessing this won’t play out well at all. But when there’s incessant shilling of the token from respected players in the space it needs calling out.