[ANN] THORChain | World's Leading Bitcoin DEX

🎙️ THORChain Podcast #244 recap

Packed episode with Chad, Kenton and Denny. Here's what stood out 👇

⚡️ Faster blocks
Chad is working on making block time adjustable by node vote, stepping down gradually from 6s towards 2s, with an easy rollback if needed. His analysis suggests ~99% of blocks take under 2s to process. That could speed up streaming swaps and the app layer, though external chain confirmations still apply. He's hoping to progress it over the next month or two.

🔗 Chains
• Router V6 is now live on BSC, after BASE and AVAX
• "Churnless chain addition" is being targeted for the next release or the one after, so new chains don't have to wait on a churn

🧪 Testing and security
• 1,300+ new unit tests plus fuzz and mutation testing
• CI (the automated testing system) run time cut from 97 to 24 minutes
• A full codebase security audit found a few dozen issues, all being worked on

👀 Visual Review
A very sick new tool that turns code changes into a web page and video explainer, so anyone can understand what's changing without reading the code. Chad plans to attach one to every merge request. Check out the first one here 👇
https://mr-5102.thorchain-mr-reviews.pages.dev/

🛡️ Small GAIA exploit
A bug let someone fake GAIA deposits and collect refunds. Around $800 was taken before the solvency checker automatically halted GAIA, roughly 20–30 seconds after crossing its $500 threshold. Chad called it a success for the protocol's self-defence and suggested covering the loss from the reserve.

💸 SwapKit rev-share
Still generating roughly $4.40–4.50 in protocol revenue per dollar spent on discounts, consistent with last week as spending doubled. A 3.21 affiliate fix should let SwapKit add more partners and scale up. Chad also floated raising the share from 20% to 25%, just an idea for now.

🌊 LP rewards debate
Around 27 nodes are already voting to stop rewards going to pools, and Kenton called for a formal ADR. The case for: prioritise POL, which has earned ~$150K in estimated fees with ~1.25M RUNE deployed. The case against: it removes a potential recovery source for existing LPs if RUNE doesn't outperform. Chad was undecided. No decision yet.

🔒 Monero
Two more merge requests are needed for 3.21.1, which Chad hopes to cut next week. After that, nodes need to adopt it and churn needs to resume before XMR can launch. He'd lean towards more confirmations at launch for safety. No date yet.

🧾 Other bits
• Kenton and Ray are planning ~400–500 swaps of $1,000 each to compare quotes vs real results
• Shielded ZEC pool: not a near-term priority
• Chains mentioned as candidates after Monero: TAO (Bittensor), other Substrate-based chains and Dash

🎥 Full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv1BSl8hjhU

Stay curious, stay Chad 🤝