THORChain Reports $4B Swap Volume in Q4, Plans Solana and ZCash Integration

**Major Milestones** - Vultisig surpassed $100M in total swap volume - Symbiosis reached $8B in cumulative cross-chain volume, routing through THORChain **Key Launches** - **THORSwap** celebrates 5 years by launching [Metro.exchange](http://Metro.exchange) - a next-gen DeFi app featuring native unified wallet, simplified UI, and user-first design. Open beta now live - **RujiraNetwork** hit $200k in total borrowed on RUJI Money Market, enabling KYC-free borrowing against BTC, ETH, DOGE, XRP and more. Also launched Custom Concentrated Liquidity on RUJI Trade - **SwapKitPowered** integrated Ballet Crypto, bringing fully decentralised cross-chain swaps to US users - **leodexio** released Rapid Swaps volume tracker at [thorvolume.com/rapid](http://thorvolume.com/rapid) - **THORStackAPI** shipped THORStack Elding as standalone binary for real-time THORChain event streaming in terminal

THORChain is approaching a major milestone with Monero ($XMR) integration, enabling **permissionless, native swaps** between Bitcoin and Monero without exchanges or identity verification. **Key Points:** - Anyone with $BTC will be able to access $XMR directly through THORChain - No centralized platform can block or control these swaps - All transactions remain transparent and traceable on-chain - The protocol guarantees unstoppable access to crypto's most censorship-resistant currency Monero represents THORChain's most technically complex integration to date. The protocol has been adapting its infrastructure specifically to support Monero's unique architecture. This development follows recent progress on other privacy-focused assets, with Zcash ($ZEC) targeting an end-of-April launch and Bittensor ($TAO) also in development.

**Zcash integration is now active on THORChain**, marking the start of native ZEC swaps across the decentralized liquidity protocol. - Trading will begin in the coming weeks as nodes add support - Bifrost scanning is going live to enable cross-chain functionality - This follows THORChain's recent momentum with Monero targeting mainnet in 1-2 months The rollout is progressive, allowing the network to scale gradually as infrastructure comes online. This adds another privacy-focused asset to THORChain's growing list of natively supported chains.

**Bridges don't actually move your assets** - they lock them in vaults and issue wrapped tokens as IOUs. When you bridge ETH to Solana, your real ETH sits locked while you receive a synthetic token representing a promise to unlock it later. **This architecture creates a critical vulnerability**: the system must maintain perfect synchronization between locked assets and minted synthetics. Major exploits include: - Wormhole: $320M lost - Ronin: $600M lost - Nomad: $190M lost **THORChain uses a different approach** with atomic swaps. When swapping ETH for SOL, your Ethereum enters a threshold-signature vault while native Solana from a separate vault goes to your address. No wrapped tokens exist. **Key differences**: - Bridge hack → your wrapped tokens become worthless - Atomic swap → transaction either completes or refunds, no synthetic tokens at risk **The tradeoff**: Native swaps are slower and more expensive than bridges, but eliminate the failure mode where users discover their wrapped tokens have no backing. With atomic swaps, you never hold someone else's promise.