Ricky_Pi ⚡🍫🦇🔊

Laura has platformed and propagated an impressive amount of misinformation about @THORChain recently, so allow me to set the record straight. To her credit though, Laura will be having TC co-founder @CBarraford on her show on Monday, to finally provide the other side to the story. @tayvano_: “It’s not decentralized” THORChain is very unique in all of crypto. It is no surprise that Taylor does not understand it, because while it superficially very much resembles other chains and protocols, it is not actually like any of them. Perhaps the easiest way to conceptualize and understand TC is to view it as a start up, ran by a DAO, that utilizes a blockchain, to offer permissionless native cross chain swaps. TC is a Startup The thing that TC is most is a cross chain decentralized exchange - a business. TC collects a fee for allowing users to permissionless trade a native, L1 token on one chain for a token on another. Businesses, as is hopefully obvious, cannot be immutable. They must be able to adapt to the market in order to remain competitive. Thus, the TC *protocol* is NOT immutable. It is governed by a DAO. TC is a DAO TC’s ultimate decision makers are its Node Operators, which control its Nodes. They vote onchain and thereby control the functioning of the protocol. Each Node gets one equal vote. They decide what version of the chain code to adopt, and thus also determine consensus. A 2/3rds super majority of nodes can do essentially whatever they want. There are also several protocol processes that only require a simple majority to enact a change. TC utilizes a blockchain TC nodes run and validate the THORChain blockchain, which is a Cosmos tindermint chain. The TC blockchain IS immutable. Already we see how this can be tricky. The TC protocol is not immutable, but the TC blockchain is immutable - easy to confuse or conflate these two things. TC offers permissionless native cross chain swaps In addition to validating the TC blockchain, TC nodes also run full nodes for every chain that TC has integrated: $BTC, $ETH, bitcoin-cash:native, litecoin:native, $DOGE, BSC, $AVAX, $SOL, GAIA, TRON, $ZEC, BASE, and $XRP. TC Nodes are split into groups of 16-20 called Asgard vaults, and each vault forms a giant multisig (TSS) wallet to custody exogenous assets - native tokens of each of those chains in the most trust-minimized way possible. These exogenous assets are paired with TC’s native token $RUNE in k = xy swap pools to allow TC’s users to swap between real, native, L1 tokens. TC’s guiding star is permissionless swaps. It is this criterion that shaped everything else about the protocol. TC believes that permissionless money needs a permissionless market. Permissionless swaps are baked into TC’s very bones. There is nothing in the TC codebase that allows it to censor addresses or transactions. It is blind to the provenance of the funds that flow through it. How decentralized is THORChain? At the time of this writing, there are 103 active nodes (with another 15 eligible and waiting to join the active set). So 69 of them cooperating control the network. However there are Node Operators (human individuals) who run more than one node (multi-node operators, MNOs) and thus have more than one vote in the TC DAO. Due to the sybil problem, it is impossible to definitively determine how many people are required to meet that 69 node threshold. My honest guess is it’s somewhere around 20 currently. Now 20 people might not sound like that many, but again, nothing in TC is as simple as it looks like from the outside. MNOs source bond from Bond Providers, and usually have a relationship with them. A BP’s influence upon a NO is roughly equivalent to the amount of RUNE bonded. Thus, decision making is actually diffused throughout hundreds of BPs, and essentially all of them believe in permissionlessness. NOs who vote against the will of their BPs will lose that bond, which dictates how many nodes they can run. So in practice, it is the totality of RUNE holders that bond their RUNE (of which there are currently 736) that determine the choices of the protocol. Understood this way, we can see that the TC DAO is actually very decentralized, and that it is the BPs, moreso than the NOs, that truly govern the network. Additionally, TC is currently experiencing a NO explosion as numerous community members are being mentored and raised up by the experienced MNOs. MNOs are altruistically giving up their income and nodes so that TC may become more decentralized. > "It's not secure" TC, like many DeFi protocols, has suffered a few exploits and has lost money thereby. However users have always been made whole from these exploits, and no swapper has ever lost funds. > "They've reallocated assets" Taylor’s most correct and most damning allegation. TC created two poorly designed financial products, Savers and Lending (collectively known as ThorFi), that were essentially bad RUNE/BTC options and these blew up in early 2025. TC did end up confiscating user funds, but issued a preferred equity token to them with the aim of eventually making it back to them. There's no sugarcoating this, it is a huge black eye for TC. > “Code not open source” TC is open source, with the very minor exception that its TSS library (the source of its May 2026 hack) is temporarily closed source while its cryptographic security is reviewed and assured. The TSS library is expected to once again be published with the next release, 3.21. > “It’s not permissionless” TC swaps are permissionless. Protocol actions/choices are determined by consensus of the DAO, as has been discussed. > “There’s an admin key” There is not. It was deprecated in Jan 2025, right after it was used to set off the ThorFi collapse. > “Stopped the chain” Correct, the DAO stopped the chain to fix what was broken. > “The actual people behind it is dwindling to nearly zero” The exact opposite actually. As discussed above.