TL;DR:
THORChain is approaching one of the most significant milestones in its history: the integration of Monero, the leading privacy-focused cryptocurrency. During the THORSday community space, developer Chad Barraford confirmed that the chain client for $XMR, built by contributor known as Boone, passed simulation testing.
The code enables inbound and outbound swaps, as well as adding and withdrawing liquidity on a local THORChain network. Chad, who described this test as his “litmus test“, expects the merge request to be integrated into the development branch within approximately two weeks. This will be followed by a stagenet and chaosnet testing phase lasting two to four weeks, before finally launching on mainnet with an initial pool of around $10,000, with the protocol treasury acting as its primary liquidity provider.
The main challenge was observability. Since $XMR is a privacy chain, outbound transactions are only visible to whoever holds the vault’s private key. The solution involves creating a single Asgard vault dedicated to Monero with all active validators as members. This is viable because Monero uses Frost cryptography, originally developed by Luke Parker for the Serai project, which is more efficient than the GG20 scheme THORChain currently uses on other chains. Another prerequisite was the implementation of memoless transactions, required by the 16-byte limit imposed by Monero, which makes conventional swap memos unfeasible.
The development of Bittensor ($TAO) is advancing simultaneously; Chad aims to launch both chains on mainnet within the same version 3.18 window. The rapid development is partly due to artificial intelligence tools, which have significantly reduced the time and cost of producing new chain clients. Zcash ($ZEC), led by developer StarSquid, aims to reach mainnet before the end of April, although the first version will not include shielded addresses.
Additionally, THORChain version 3.18 will incorporate the protocol-owned liquidity mechanism, which will redirect a percentage of system revenue toward pools with the highest fee ratio relative to their depth. Newer and smaller pools, such as those for Solana, Zcash, Monero and $TAO, will receive the largest share of capital. At current income levels, Chad estimates a capacity of approximately $200,000 per month. As for rapid swaps, the largest single trade has already reached $1.6 million, and this modality accounted for roughly 50% of the protocol’s total volume on a recent day.
