THORChain is the world's first cross chain decentralized exchange. It's been operating for over 5 years now. Before, the only scalable way to trade between Bitcoin and Ethereum was going through a centralized exchange. Atomic swaps were available, however they can't scale. Bridges and wrapped tokens were used, but they introduced counterparty risk. There wasn't a proper DEX to swap Bitcoin in a self custody wallet for Ethereum in a self custody wallet. Vitalik Buterin highlighted this problem back in March 2020, expressing his frustration that there wasn't an easy way to move between Bitcoin and Ethereum without relying on centralized exchanges. THORChain was built to solve this problem. THORChain was designed like Bitcoin and Ethereum, to be permissionless, censorship-resistant, and public. All transactions on THORChain are transparent, there is no obfuscation. When Monero starts trading, XMR swaps will have all the same public data as BTC and ETH swaps. It remains the closest example of a decentralized BTC-to-ETH exchange described by Vitalik. We believe THORChain is one of the most decentralized blockchains in crypto. According to a Raynalytics dashboard, the network has 111 active nodes operated by 56 unique node operators. 20 operators control just over two-thirds of the active nodes. There is no single developer or entity in control of THORChain. Core developers can make recommendations and write code to update the protocol, but nodes ultimately decide whether to adopt those changes. Protocol upgrades depend on sufficient support from the validator set, meaning developers cannot unilaterally impose changes on the network. The decentralization and product market fit of THORChain make it a core piece of DeFi.