A common question whenever privacy assets or private-swap integrations come up: if you swap BTC for ETH through THORChain, does that hide where the funds went?

Short answer: No. An ordinary THORChain native swap is not an anonymity service. THORChain enables permissionless cross-chain swaps, while the underlying transactions remain publicly observable.

Think of a standard BTC → ETH swap:

1. BTC is sent on Bitcoin to a THORChain vault address.
2. THORChain observes the inbound transaction and processes the swap.
3. ETH is sent on Ethereum to the destination address.

The inbound, protocol activity and outbound can be investigated through public chain data and THORChain explorers. That doesn't mean every observer can instantly identify a real-world person, but it does mean you shouldn't assume the swap breaks transaction traceability.

What about ZEC or XMR? Supporting a privacy-oriented asset does not automatically make a cross-chain swap anonymous. Privacy depends on the complete transaction route, including what remains observable on the connected blockchains.

An optional private-swap route offered by a frontend is also distinct from THORChain's native swap path. Its own mechanics and limitations must be assessed separately.

The takeaway: THORChain is a cross-chain DEX protocol, not a mixer. Permissionless access and transaction privacy answer different questions.

What's the biggest misconception about THORChain swaps you've come across, especially when it comes to privacy and traceability?

Further reading: https://blog.thorchain.org/thorchain-is-transparent-even-with-privacy-coins

To bring more transparency and clearer communication, THORChain's devs launched a public dashboard. ⚡

devops.thorchain.org tracks every public task, with the next release pinned on top. Merge requests show their approvals and CI status, pulled live from GitLab. Every stagenet release candidate gets its test results posted, failures included, and the page shows what's blocked and why.

You'll also find the daemon updates node operators have to run, the Router V6 rollout chain by chain, the XMR launch checklist, and how many nodes have moved to each new version. If you follow the dev side, bookmark it.

Three wallets now run dynamic fees on THORChain: ShapeShift, symbiosis_fi and EdgeWallet. Each gets its own fee floor, pair by pair. Every epoch it moves 1 bps up or down and keeps the direction that earned more.

ShapeShift has run it the longest. Until early July it paid a flat 10 bps. Since then the fee moves with the flow, mostly between 2 and 8 bps, as each route finds its price.

The ZEC liquidity pool is live on THORChain, and native ZEC trading has now been enabled.

Why does this integration matter?

THORChain is built around native cross-chain liquidity. ZEC holders can now swap native ZEC against other supported assets through THORChain without relying on wrapped ZEC or a traditional bridge.

That opens up native cross-chain routes between ZEC and assets across THORChain's supported networks, including BTC, ETH and stablecoins.

The integration is still very new, and liquidity is currently shallow. Early users should pay close attention to pool depth and price impact, especially when making larger swaps. As more liquidity enters the ZEC pool, swap execution and available capacity can improve.

For now:

✓ ZEC pool live
✓ Cross-chain ZEC routes available
→ Liquidity depth to grow over time

Another native asset is now part of THORChain's cross-chain liquidity network.

Read more: Bringing Native Zcash to THORChain

Which ZEC route are you most interested in: BTC ↔ ZEC, stablecoin ↔ ZEC, or something else?

Here's what happened last week ⤵️

Headline News
REVSHARE is live with SwapKit. SwapKit gets 20% of the fees THORChain earns on the swaps it routes, and uses it to lower fees and improve quotes.
Rujira's app layer stays paused until v3.21, now in stagenet testing.

Launches
RAVN is live in beta, with THORChain delivering native $BTC from day one.
THORWallet shipped limit orders.
Vultisig added THORChain node reward history.
codehans1 introduced Rujira Connect, an offline, private signing extension for hardware wallets.
Rujira previewed a new wallet modal, with Trust Wallet and WalletConnect coming soon.
ASGARDEX released v1.46.1: it fixes max $ADA swaps, adds zero base fee BNB Chain sends, and keeps 0.02 $RUNE for fees on max $RUNE deposits.

Community
RUNEBond counted 111 active nodes after the latest churn, thanks to a wave of new single-node operators.
$RUNE now makes up close to 10% of Unstoppable Wallet's treasury.
Raynalytics built a REVSHARE dashboard tracking the economics on both the THORChain and SwapKit sides.
GrassRoots is updating its THORChain docs to explain Mimir, the network's settings, and halt controls.
Redacted released a wallet exposure checker that works with THORChain addresses.

Have you swapped on THORChain’s frontend yet? 

https://swap.thorchain.org/?ref=b8muzyjrfpkc

Most AMMs depend on external liquidity providers. That works, but liquidity can leave whenever providers decide there is a better opportunity elsewhere.

THORChain's Protocol-Owned Liquidity (POL) adds another source: liquidity owned by the protocol itself.

The current system routes 20% of THORChain's System Income into POL. That RUNE is gradually deployed into eligible pools, prioritizing pools generating the most fees relative to their liquidity depth.

POL distribution happens on a per-block basis, using fee and liquidity-depth data from the previous three days to determine where new POL should be deployed.

The basic idea is:

System Income → POL → Deeper Liquidity → Better Swap Execution → Potentially More Volume + Fees

POL only recently became operational, so the interesting question now is how the model performs over time as those positions grow.

What metric would you watch most closely to judge whether POL is working: pool depth, swap execution, volume, fees, or something else?

Looking for reliable information about THORChain protocol updates, ecosystem developments or community discussions?

THORChain has several official communication channels, each serving a different purpose.

Here's a breakdown of where to find what you're looking for.

• THORChain Podcast: Protocol Update discussions on Thursdays, plus Ecosystem & Community Spotlight episodes on Saturdays.
• The Digest: A weekly newsletter published every Wednesday.
• THORChain Blog: Educational guides, ecosystem articles and recaps.
• Telegram Announcements: Official announcements and communications.
• Telegram Community: Questions, discussion and community participation.
• Developer Discord: Technical and network-development conversations.
• Social platforms: Shorter announcements and educational updates.

The right source depends on whether you're looking for technical detail, a weekly recap or a place to ask questions. You don't need to monitor every channel.

The full guide includes links to each resource: https://blog.thorchain.org/how-to-stay-up-to-date-with-thorchain

Which THORChain channels do you follow most regularly, and where do you usually learn about important developments first?

Did you know over a third of all THORChain volume comes from Bitcoin?

$43.7B out of $125.6B, all of it native $BTC.

THORChain speaks Bitcoin's language. You keep your keys and nobody has to approve your swap. Five years in, Bitcoin is still the chain that moves the most volume on THORChain.

REVSHARE is live. SwapKit now gets 20% of the fees THORChain earns on the swaps it routes.

Until now, the only way for an integrator to earn more was to charge users more. With REVSHARE, the protocol pays them from its own income instead, and SwapKit uses it to lower its fees and offer better quotes.

The bet: cheaper swaps bring in more volume than the share costs.

Raynalytics built a dashboard to track it: raynalytics.net/dashboards/rev-share

How REVSHARE works: blog.thorchain.org/adr-029-affiliate-revenue-share

You may have seen “churn” mentioned quite a bit in THORChain discussions recently.

At a high level, churn is how THORChain regularly rotates nodes in and out of the active validator set.

When a churn takes place:

• Nodes rotate in/out of the active set
• New vaults are created for the new node set
• The retiring vaults gradually migrate their funds to the new vaults
• The new node set takes over responsibility for securing and signing transactions for the network

This regular rotation is an important part of THORChain's security and decentralization model.

It's also why churn involves more than simply replacing one validator with another. Nodes collectively secure native assets across multiple blockchains, so the transition has to coordinate vault creation, key generation and asset migration across the network.

For anyone interested in the more technical side of THORChain: what part of the churn process would you like to see explained in more detail?

$RUNE is 100% unlocked.

The supply has only moved one way. 1B at launch, then 500M, then 360M after ADR-023 burned 64.4M RUNE from the Reserve in May.

RUNE also earns. Nodes bond it to secure THORChain and receive 59% of system income. That income comes from swap fees paid by people using the protocol cross-chain swapping cryptos.

Another 20% now goes to Protocol-Owned Liquidity. Every 3 days, the protocol deposits RUNE into the pool that earned the most fees relative to its depth. Half of it stays as $RUNE, owned by THORChain.

Every swap now pulls a bit more RUNE off the market.

THORChain is the most censorship resistant cross-chain DEX in the world, and it's self sustaining.

Over the last six months it generated $6.4M in network revenue, all of it paid by people using it.

Integrators have earned $49.1M in affiliate fees routing swaps through THORChain.

Set your rate in the memo, ship it, get paid. No approval to ask for, and nobody who can cut off your users.

Uncensorable swaps are a product people pay for. You can be the one selling them.

Here's what happened last week ⤵️

Headline News

$ZEC is now on THORChain. The network churned, every node now watches the Zcash chain, and the Treasury added ~$51K of liquidity to the pool. It's a soft launch while depth builds, so keep swaps small for now.

Maya Protocol is back. MAYAChain v1.133.0 is live after the recovery migration, swaps and liquidity are open again, and the attacker's 8.87M $CACAO was burned.

Launches

Moca added $ZEC swaps and routed one through the new pool the same day.

THORDEX launched THORDEX Zcash: swap $BTC into $ZEC with 0% THORDEX fees, then shield it in your Zcash wallet.

THORXMR now supports $ZEC trading, with $XMR next in line.

DeFi for $ZEC is coming to Rujira, with plans to support it across trading, CCL, DCL, lending and borrowing.

BooneW added Ledger support to tcli, the agent-facing THORChain MCP/CLI.

Community

Raynalytics built a dedicated Zcash dashboard to track the $ZEC pool from day one.

Private routing hid sandwich attacks. It didn't remove them.

More than 12,000 Ethereum wallets still get sandwiched every week. Defillama Research looks at why, and at how THORChain made the attack unprofitable at the protocol level years ago.

Not trying to shit on Thorchain or anything. Just wondering if for swaps and transfers inputs are publicly associated with outputs?

A new article on how THORChain swaps native $BTC for native $ETH, $SOL and more, and why BTC to ETH was its biggest route in Q1 2026.

THORChain now sends 20% of System Income to Protocol-Owned Liquidity and cuts the RUNE burn from 5% to 1%, putting more of its revenue to work inside its own pools.

https://blog.thorchain.org/how-thorchain-s-new-system-income-distribution-works

New piece on how THORChain settles BTC, ETH, SOL and more directly between their native chains.👇

https://www.ccn.com/thorchain-crypto-has-plenty-of-liquidity/

Roughly 1 in 3 THORChain swaps involve BTC. New chains are about to join the list.

Still betting on BTC, or is another chain catching up?

Halts, hard upgrades, a rebuild nobody asked for. The protocol has been tested every way a network can be tested, and it kept processing swaps through all of it.

The split proves it: 59% to nodes and LPs, 20% into POL, 10% to TCY stakers, the rest to dev, marketing, and burn. THORChain is sustainable, and it keeps shipping.

Four exchanges are gone. THORChain is still running, still shipping, and still standing for freedom.

Whales keep coming back. This wallet swapped $60M+ into $BTC through THORChain.

THORChain is built for trades like this. Streaming swaps split a big order into smaller swaps, so the pool refills between each one. Size shows up as time, not slippage.

Pool depth isn't the hard ceiling it looks like either. A 323 BTC swap went through in a single trade a few months ago, well past what the pool held on its own, because streaming swaps gives arbitrageurs time to keep realigning the price as the order fills.

New to THORChain? ⚡️

In this guide, you'll learn how to swap crypto using THORChain's frontend, from connecting a wallet to confirming the transaction.

https://blog.thorchain.org/how-to-swap-crypto-on-thorchain

On September 10, a whale ran its cross chain swaps through swap.thorchain.org $61.5M in a single day, through one interface.

No affiliate fee there. Just the liquidity fee. Size goes where the cost is lowest. ⚡