THORChain has resumed trading after more than a month offline following a May 15 exploit that drained roughly $10.7 million from one vault.
“Trading is live again on THORChain,” the protocol announced on X on June 23. The restart restores swaps, signing, churning, secured and trade assets, and liquidity provider actions—reopening the world’s largest Bitcoin DEX for on-chain activity after the pause.
Why trading stopped
The outage followed a breach of THORChain’s GG20 threshold signature scheme. According to the protocol’s incident report, a malicious node operator that had recently joined the network was able to reconstruct a full private key through progressive leakage of key material and used it to drain a single vault. Automatic solvency checks detected the imbalance within minutes and the network halted signing and trading across several chains; four other vaults were not affected.
What the team did
THORChain said the restart was deliberate and security-first. Teams verified every vault, checked node keyshares, and executed the staged recovery plan. Most vaults were validated using KeyVerify; remaining legacy vaults were migrated to a new vault set. Before normal services returned, validators approved the v3.19.0 upgrade, which introduced compromised-vault quarantine, keyshare checks and recovery logic tied to ADR028.
The decision to patch GG20 rather than immediately replace it drew some criticism earlier, but the team said the chosen recovery path would patch the exploit quickly while longer-term cryptographic changes remain under review.
Market reaction and outlook
On June 23 THORChain’s token RUNE traded at about $0.4195, down 0.2% over 24 hours but up roughly 2% over seven days, with $16.29 million in daily volume. The token’s move was muted—far below its all-time high but avoiding a sharp selloff on restart day.
What’s next
THORChain flagged several near-term product and protocol milestones: native Monero (XMR) swaps are working end-to-end in testing and a live launch is “on the horizon,” with Zcash (ZEC) support slated to follow. The team also plans dynamic fees and initiatives to deepen liquidity. Earlier coverage indicated ZEC support could arrive within two weeks of the restart, while other integrations such as Bittensor would come later as operations normalize.
The restart gives THORChain a chance to rebuild trading activity and liquidity after the exploit. The immediate tests ahead are operational: will swaps remain smooth, will vault security hold up, and will liquidity return to the cross-chain network? Traders and validators will be watching closely as the project moves from containment to recovery.
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