THORChain halted asset swaps on 10 networks. Node operators disabled them on Saturday at 14:34 Moscow time. The list includes Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Tron.
What THORChain is. It is a cross-chain protocol. Through it, assets are swapped between blockchains without an intermediary and without identity verification.
Side effect. Not only regular users lost access. Along with them, those who were laundering money after the largest hack in crypto history also got stuck.
Why did the network go down?
The reason is technical. It all started with one block on Ethereum.
- Reorg on Ethereum. The network rewrote the last block, and an already confirmed transaction from it disappeared. Along with it, a 10 ETH deposit that THORChain had already credited vanished.
- Refund by price limit. The swap did not go through due to the limit, and the protocol returned funds that were no longer in the vault.
- Double payout. Then the protocol also returned the real deposit to the sender. The extra 10 ETH payout triggered an automatic pause.
What else is working?
- Avalanche, Base and XRP - trading continued only there, judging by the network status page.
The team warned of the risk. Once the vulnerability becomes public, an attacker could send a transaction with the same number after a reorg of an external network and receive a payout from the protocol's vaults.
No restart timeline was given: "Nodes will enable networks as they deem them safe."
What does the Binance hack have to do with it?
A week earlier, Binance lost $6.3 billion. The halt in swaps hit those who were withdrawing that money.
- According to Chainalysis - the pause slowed down the laundering of funds by the North Korean group TraderTraitor.
- While swaps are down - no one can get through most THORChain bridges.
- $500 million - that is how much the attackers previously moved through Tron before reaching Solana.
Who is pressuring the nodes?
The FBI intervened the same Saturday. It directly urged THORChain node operators and other services to block transactions from TraderTraitor addresses.
The protocol founder is against it. John-Paul Thorbjornsen does not want to shut down the network to meet demands: according to him, if nodes take the network offline, "the experiment is over."
- 13% - that is how much the RUNE token gained after the Binance hack.
What does this mean for a trader?
Key point: while swaps on ten networks are down, some crypto instruments may simply not trade. No one suspends prop account rules, though.
Check the terms in advance. The list of allowed instruments and how drawdown is calculated are visible before the start - pick a challenge for your market and go through the rules in the academy.
Do you trade crypto through weeks like this?
First $3.6 billion leaves the exchange. Then a cross-chain protocol goes down on half the blockchains. Some of your instruments simply stop trading. Days like these test not the idea, but the account rules: somewhere altcoins are outside the list of allowed instruments, somewhere the daily loss is calculated from the account maximum rather than the balance, and a position in a halted asset knocks you out of the program. This is read before the start, not at the moment of the halt.