The recent 'raise the caps event' on Thorchain provided an opportunity for me to pool some Litecoin with Rune, something I've been wanting to do for a while - what can I say, I've got a soft spot for the old LTC!
You can only pool Native Litecoin with Rune on Thorchain - the fact that it's native is sort of the whole point of the whole Thorchain project after all.
However, the Litecoin I had earmarked to pool was sitting on Binance Smart Chain as the BSC version of LTC (pooled with USDT) and I wanted to get that out of BSC and into Rune as Native Litecoin.
Now I could have just jiggled assets around via the Binance centralised exchange, but I wanted to see IF, in this age of the decentralised cross chain bridge, how easy it would be to get this specific BSC LTC converted to Native LTC.
NB I'm not going to talk about the pooling bit here, I'll do that another time, TBH I think it's cool enough that you CAN indeed move assets from BSC to Thorchain and from their swap to Native Litecoin (or Bitcoin or ETH and a few other coins too already, with more to follow in the future no doubt!).
NB I wouldn't classify this as 'hassle free' because it involves a fair bit of swapping assets through four different wallets, but if you're used to Thorchain and Broswer wallets it's easy enough, takes about 10 minutes and will cost you only around $3 dollars in fees (if you're final swap is to LTC, this might be more for BTC, it would be A LOT more for ETH).
The key components of the bridge are (ironically for RUNE) BNB and the Binance Browser Wallet.
What you Need
- A MetaMask Wallet connected with Binance Smart Chain (I'm assuming you've got this down already if you're reading this!)
- The Binance Browser wallet - which bridges from BSC to Binance Chain
- Trust Wallet - installed on your phone, which connects Binance Chain to Thorchain
- Either a ledger or the XDEFI wallet which also connects to Thorchain which stores your native LTC.
Moving BSC LTC from BSC and swapping for Native LTC on Rune
1. SWAP the BSC LTC for BNB on Pancake Swap
I hopefully don't need a screenshot here, you just need to swap your LTC for BNB, or whatever asset you want to swap over into Thorchain, BNB is your cross chain vessel (somewhat ironically)
2. Send the BNB from your BSC MetaMask wallet to your Binance Browser wallet
NB you can simply download the Binance Browser Wallet from the Chrome Store - you don't need to enter in any personal details and the account addresses generated don't require KYC if that's a concern.
3. Use your Binance Browser wallet to bridge your BNB over the Binance Chain
And it's VERY easy to bridge your BSC BNB to Binance Chain because when you create the wallet it creates one of each account for you...
4. Send your BNB to your Trust Wallet
Now you're on the Binance Chain you're looking at about 7 cents per send, so no worries!
5. Connect your Trust Wallet AND your Ledger or XDEFI wallet to the ThorSwap App
The whole point of Thorchain is that it allows you to connect multiple wallets which support multiple different chains at once:
when you've connected your two wallets your wallet display will look something like this:
It shows you your different assets in your different wallets, even though they are on multiple chains - of course the real 'star' here in a way is the XDEFI wallet which itself supports multiple chains - native LTC and BTC for example.
6. Swap your BNB for Rune and then swap your Rune for LTC on Thorchain
OK Maybe I could make this two stages, but it's two of the same thing - NB you have to swap for Rune on Thorchain, there's no other option ATM. You can't swap one token for another directly.
The fees are fairly minimal overall, but worth keeping in mind given there are so many stages....
The final stage is to swap your Rune for LTC...
Final Thoughts - it's a bit of a hassle, but there is no CEX involved...
All in all this is two Binance Smart Chain txs, one BNB tx and then two hydrid Rune/ BNB and Rune/ ltc txs, so total fee comes in at around $3.
So if you want to keep your percentage fees below 1% you're looking at moving $300 around at time, which is OK I guess.
Far worse is the hassle - all the txs are quick enough so there's not that much hanging around, but I definitely wouldn't want to be doing this once a day - once a month more like, but you know, it does work and the fees are reasonable!