Thorchain DEX surpasses volume milestone, how did RUNE react?

• Thorchain made headway on the DeFi front as the volume soared to a new milestone.
• RUNE got stuck in a ranging price performance.

It is always an exciting thing to see a blockchain network experience growth during the bear market. Thorchain [RUNE] is the latest blockchain to walk down that path as it celebrates a new growth milestone for its ThorWallet DEX.

Realistic or not, here’s RUNE’s market cap in BTC’s terms

According to the official announcement, Thorchain’s ThorWallet DEX’s total volume recently surpassed the $200 million milestone. This means the DEX has been growing at a healthy pace.

The achievement notably occurred at a time when the market has been leaning more in favor of the bears or rather, the bulls have been struggling.

⚡️BREAKING NEWS: @THORWalletDEX smashes through the $200M total volume milestone! 🎉

Thank you to our amazing community for being part of this achievement. Keep riding the DeFi wave with us! 🌊🌊🌊 pic.twitter.com/AXrERs6tAl

— THORWallet DEX⚡️ (@THORWalletDEX) October 14, 2023

The development indicated that Thorchain was on the right path as far as adoption was concerned. It will be interesting to see how both the ThorWallet DEX and the Thorchain protocol perform once the bull market is in full swing.

RUNE bulls and bears find themselves in a standoff

Will the growing DEX volume in the Thorchain ecosystem have an impact on its native cryptocurrency, RUNE? The latter qualifies as one of the most bullish cryptocurrencies in the last four months.

However, its performance in the first two weeks of October was bearish, as the price cooled from its previous rally.

RUNE owed its previously bullish performance to confidence due to the organic growth that the network has achieved so far this year. Its $2.26 peak at the start of October was the highest price point that it has achieved so far in 2023.

Its $1.65 press time price represented a 27% discount from its aforementioned peak.

Source: TradingView

RUNE has been trading sideways for the last few days, and this is quite significant. It either means that the bears have lost their momentum or that RUNE holders are unwilling to sell below the press time price level.

The latter suggested that traders were still heavily optimistic about RUNE’s future prospects at the time of writing.

On-chain data revealed that RUNE is still in a low-volume phase at press time, which was in line with the sideways price action. This was also reflected in the Open Interest in USD per Exchange, which was at its lowest point in the last 30 days.

This was a sign of the prevailing directional uncertainty.

Source: Santiment

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While RUNE was experiencing its slow phase, the Thorchain network has something else going for it. Development Activity in the network has been rising, especially since the start of October. At the time of writing, it was at its highest level in the last four weeks.

Source: Santiment

The rising development activity could help inject more confidence back into traders, potentially aiding the bulls.