I don't think many people understand THORChain.
I see many new big guys getting bullish on L1<>L1 swaps. I was bullish on that in 2019-20.

IMO, though L1<>L1 swap is the core/foundation, it's just approx 20% of what THORChain can provide.

An ecosystem can be built on top.

THORChain is for short-tail / highly economic assets. It will target high trade volume assets (likely big chains).

Downside: Limited Pool Slots.
Plus L1 <> L1 swaps are not generally meant for arbitrage (high fees.
Confirmation time on few trades:
https://twitter.com/THORChain/status/1385027925154562050?s=20 )

Both of above issues are solved by other products which will use liquidity from THORChain pools:

@thorstarter will be the relayer between short-tail & long-tail assets.
$XRUNE - $RUNE pool will play a big role.

@BrokkrFinance will provide synths for faster & cheaper txns.

Bullish on both, but that's not all.

There will be "interest-bearing" THOR.USD (composite).

+ , Don't like $RUNE as settlement asset?
Use Stablecoin (BTC:THOR.USD, ETH:THOR.USD pools)
Maxis

Moreover, THOR.USD is minted by burning $RUNE
Yes, BURN. https://gitlab.com/thorchain/thornode/-/issues/862

Thorchain Name Service (TNS) is another thing which is coming from THORChain's side.

Send funds directly to registered names like "Mehow", "Erik" etc.

https://gitlab.com/thorchain/thornode/-/issues/887

And, https://twitter.com/thorswap/status/1390107804548091906?s=20

Note that the liquidity pools will be IL protected.
Plus there will be fixed-interest Lending out in time.

Synths backed by pooled assets can also be sent across Cosmos, Polkadot and EVM compatible chains.
You can imagine the utilities it will bring to synths. Yield-farming.

Again, that's not all.

There will be many more products out in time which will use L1 liquidity (one way or another).

Direct payment system, lending/borrowing, Fiat on/off ramps, Future trading, are some fields from top of my head.

To sum up, decentralised L1<>L1 swaps are a big thing, but many more products can be built on top which will require such cross-chain liquidity to operate.

Usecases for L1 liquidity/synths/composites should increase, and that is what i will be looking forward to in 2021/22.

Tbh, i also understand THORChain only on the high level.
There is much more which can be done through such cross-chain liquidity.

Next 3-4 months will be interesting. And if everything goes well, i can see RUNE in number 2 spot.

"Everything goes well" is something you much focus on.

There will always be questions about node operators, churn rate and stuff.

Atm, Multi-asgard can stretch node operators to 250 (limit of Tendermint).
These 250 nodes will manage billions of volume of txns.

These nodes will churn every 50K blocks (2-3 days). Churning can take hours, and txns gets stuck during this process.
This will likely be a concern in time.

Maybe churn rate can also be increased to 100K blocks (4-7 days), from current 50K. Something for devs to look into.

Whatever it is, expect the next 3-6 months to be filled with knowledge and usecases.

Wallet integrations will also be done for volume:
@xdefi_wallet as Web extension (app in time)
@TrustWalletApp @ShapeShift_io for mobile
@Ledger @cryptokeepkey as hardware

More as we go.

I see THORChain being used in every cross-chain transaction, and a product from every DeFi field will source liquidity from it (either merged or built seperately).

A whole DeFi ecosystem will be powered by THORChain. A cross-chain DeFi ecosystem.

2021-2022.

$RUNE @THORChain