THORChain Preps Major Expansion With Monero, TAO and Zcash Rollouts

THORChain is preparing a major expansion that will add Monero, along with parallel rollouts for Bittensor and Zcash. During the THORSday community space, developer Chad Barraford said the chain client for $XMR, built by contributor Boone, has passed simulation testing.

Monero integration: testing timeline and initial liquidity

Barraford said the code supports inbound and outbound swaps, as well as adding and withdrawing liquidity on a local THORChain network. He described the simulation as his “litmus test” and expects the merge request to be integrated into the development branch within about two weeks.

After that, THORChain plans a testing sequence that includes a stagenet and chaosnet phase lasting two to four weeks. The Monero rollout on mainnet is expected to begin with an initial pool of around $10,000, with the protocol treasury acting as the primary liquidity provider.

Technical approach: observability, vault structure, and memoless transactions

Barraford said the main technical challenge was observability. Because $XMR is a privacy-focused chain, outbound transactions are only visible to the party that holds the vault’s private key.

The solution described involves creating a single Asgard vault dedicated to Monero, with all active validators as members. The approach is supported by Monero’s use of Frost cryptography, originally developed by Luke Parker for the Serai project, which Barraford said is more efficient than the GG20 scheme THORChain currently uses on other chains.

Another prerequisite is the implementation of memoless transactions, required by Monero’s 16-byte limit, which makes conventional swap memos unfeasible.

Simultaneous rollouts: Bittensor and Zcash

THORChain development for Bittensor ($TAO) is also progressing. Barraford said he aims to launch both the Monero and TAO chains on mainnet within the same version 3.18 window.

He attributed faster progress for TAO partly to artificial intelligence tools that have reduced the time and cost of producing new chain clients.

For Zcash ($ZEC), developer StarSquid is targeting a mainnet launch before the end of April. Barraford said the first Zcash version will not include shielded addresses.

Protocol changes in version 3.18: protocol-owned liquidity and swap activity

Barraford said THORChain version 3.18 will incorporate a protocol-owned liquidity mechanism. The change is designed to redirect a percentage of system revenue toward pools with the highest fee ratio relative to their depth.

He said newer and smaller pools—specifically those for Solana, Zcash, Monero, and $TAO—are expected to receive the largest share of capital. Based on current income levels, Barraford estimated a capacity of approximately $200,000 per month.

On rapid swaps, Barraford said the largest single trade has already reached $1.6 million. He added that rapid swaps accounted for roughly 50% of the protocol’s total volume on a recent day.