THORChain Activates Zcash Liquidity Pool Amid Security Scrutiny

The integration follows months of technical development, including the implementation of Zcash-specific UTXO handling, RPC logic, and oracle support. Developers refined the system throughout September to address signing inconsistencies and fee reporting, ensuring that transaction expiry calculations remain stable across the network. While the liquidity pool is now active, THORChain has clarified that full trading functionality will arrive in a subsequent rollout phase.

This expansion arrives as THORChain faces heightened scrutiny regarding the use of its platform for laundering stolen assets. Following a $387.5 million breach at the exchange Bitget, investigators identified roughly $6.3 million in ETH-to-BTC swaps processed through THORChain. In response to requests to blacklist addresses linked to the attacker, the protocol maintained that its permissionless architecture lacks the technical capability for selective transaction blocking. THORChain representatives emphasized that emergency protocols are reserved for systemic solvency risks and require a two-thirds consensus among node operators, underscoring the project's commitment to decentralization despite ongoing regulatory and security pressure.