THORChain Opens Zcash Pool; ZEC Swaps Not Live Yet

THORChain switched on a Zcash (ZEC) liquidity pool on Oct. 2, 2026, hours after completing a node churn in which every node began watching the Zcash chain. The protocol said the pool is live but that “trading is the next step,” and it gave no firm start time or pool-depth figure, according to Crypto.news.

The same post told users that depth in the new pool is limited and will build over time. “Liquidity is shallow for now and will grow over time, so trade with caution in the early days,” the protocol wrote. THORChain also called the venue permissionless, a reference to the fact that it routes native assets rather than wrapped versions.

The pool is live, but swaps are not

THORChain’s Oct. 2 announcement separates two things that traders often treat as one: pool activation and the start of user trading. The protocol’s own wording puts trading on the far side of the launch, and an active-node page on its network explorer currently lists ZEC as “OK” under chain information alongside Bitcoin, Ethereum and other tracked networks.

The integration was not a single-day job. THORChain began laying ZEC groundwork in its March 4 protocol upgrade, adding chain-specific UTXO handling and RPC logic. A related change added ZEC to the protocol’s enshrined oracle so the protocol could track a native ZEC price. A March GitLab change then corrected how ZEC network fees and solvency were reported; developers said the earlier implementation could inflate gas tolerance because the full ZIP-317 fee was treated like a per-byte rate during one solvency calculation, and the merged fix changed how the transaction-size input was handled.

Work continued into September. A THORNode merge request documented signing inconsistencies that appeared when ZEC transaction expiry was computed from different local chain tips, producing different signing digests between nodes. The merged change tied expiry to an agreed ZEC height at a fixed THORChain height and preserved that value through retries and restarts, adding periodic updates to the agreed ZEC height through network-fee reports. On Sept. 17, THORChain’s blog said Zcash was next in line for mainnet as chain launches resumed after a stability-focused period, but kept the timing conditional.

For readers weighing what “native” means here: THORChain’s documentation describes its exchange model as a collection of continuous liquidity pools handling native assets without wrapped versions, with RUNE acting as the settlement asset and routing asset between supported chains. Earlier THORNode changes classified ZEC as a UTXO-based chain and added configurations for address validation, gas units, dust thresholds, block timing, coinbase parameters and inbound transaction requirements.

The launch lands in the middle of a hack dispute

The ZEC pool arrives while THORChain is under renewed scrutiny over stolen assets moving through cross-chain swaps. Bitget said unauthorized transfers began on Sept. 24 and later raised the value sent to attacker-controlled addresses to approximately $387.5 million after investigators folded Zcash and Tron activity into the total; the exchange said Mandiant and SlowMist worked with its security and technical teams, and its disclosure listed affected assets including XRP, ETH, USDT, ZEC, USDC, XAUt, BNB, AVAX and TRX.

Crypto.news reported on Sept. 28 that a wallet linked to the Bitget attacker completed 27 swaps through THORChain, converting about 2,390 ETH into 75.2 BTC worth roughly $6.3 million at the time. Bitget asked THORChain to refuse transactions from addresses tied to the attacker, and THORChain declined. In an Oct. 1 blog post, the protocol said node operators can pause a chain or the entire protocol when solvency is at risk, but that the same emergency system cannot selectively remove an individual transaction, and that major changes need node-operator adoption with a two-thirds consensus threshold. Bitget’s recovery page lists attacker addresses across EVM networks, XRP Ledger, Zcash and Tron and offers a 5% bounty to eligible parties whose voluntary work directly results in funds being frozen or recovered.

Coverage of the dispute has split between outlets. Crypto.news, which first reported the ZEC pool launch, frames the hack-linked swaps as an ongoing part of the THORChain debate; PANews, reporting on Sept. 30, covered a separate Binance Wallet development — the launch of the o1.exchange (O) Alpha trading competition, with 184,000 O tokens worth about $200,000 in total rewards across two phases. Under those rules, users who can trade Alpha assets and buy O through Binance Wallet (Keyless) or Binance Alpha rank by cumulative purchase volume, and the top 2,000 share rewards equally at 92 O each. Two boosts apply: an Early Bird Boost granting multipliers from 2.0x down to 1.0x depending on the trading day, and a 1.2x Rising Trader Boost subject to a cap for traders who have won fewer than three times historically. Only purchase volume counts — Alpha-to-Alpha trading and cross-chain bridging do not — and rewards must be claimed within 14 days after claiming opens, per PANews.

Why it matters

Zcash has historically been a small share of THORChain’s routed volume, so the pool’s significance is less about immediate order flow than about what it adds to the protocol’s list of supported chains. ZEC’s UTXO design made it a harder integration than an EVM chain, which is why the work stretched across UTXO handling, oracle pricing, fee accounting and node-to-node signing. THORChain’s refusal to block specific attacker addresses also puts the protocol at the center of a wider industry argument: centralized exchanges and investigators want targeted freezes, while permissionless cross-chain venues argue they can halt networks but not pick out individual transactions. The Bitget case follows a similar dispute after the February 2025 Bybit hack, in which the FBI attributed roughly $1.5 billion in stolen virtual assets to North Korea’s TraderTraitor activity and Bybit CEO Ben Zhou said 72% of about $900 million in converted assets had passed through THORChain — a figure attributed to Zhou, not to THORChain.

What to watch

The trigger to monitor is THORChain’s switch-on of native ZEC trading, which the protocol has flagged as the next step without a date. Watch whether the team publishes a pool-depth figure or opens swaps without one, and whether Bitget’s recovery page adds or removes Zcash addresses as the investigation proceeds.

Sources: crypto.news, PANews