THORChain Resumes Trading After Month-Long Halt From $10.7M Exploit

THORChain restored full operations Tuesday morning, bringing signing, churning, swaps, and liquidity-provider actions back online after a halt tied to a $10.7 million exploit in May.

The protocol's official account announced the restart just before 3 a.m. ET Tuesday, confirming that signing, churning, secured and trade assets, LP actions, and swaps are all running.

RUNE was trading around $0.42 at the time of the announcement, and its up 3.7% in the past 24 hours, per CoinGecko.

The May Exploit

The halt began May 15, when one of six Asgard vaults was compromised, sending approximately $7.4 million in unauthorized transactions before the network stopped signing. Total losses reached $10.7 million as funds were drained across Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Base vaults.

A second layer of scrutiny arrived June 1, when security startup V12 disclosed that it had reported a near-identical vulnerability to THORChain developers weeks before the May breach. V12 alleged the protocol silently applied a patch without paying the bounty, then later told researchers the bounty program was permanently retired. The firm said it planned to release exploit code for additional unpatched bugs.

Recovery Steps

The restart statement credited the six-week timeline to systematic verification rather than speed. Developers confirmed every vault and keyshare before reopening functions, according to the announcement. Node operators, the dev team, and the Maya Protocol team, the connected chain that kept liquidity available during the downtime, were cited as contributors to the recovery.

THORChain routes cross-chain swaps through liquidity pools without wrapped tokens or bridges. The protocol describes itself as the leading Bitcoin DEX.

What Comes Next

The restart post lists native Monero swaps as the next feature, with end-to-end testing complete and a live launch described as on the horizon. Zcash support follows close behind. Dynamic fees and deeper liquidity are also in progress, per the announcement.