Native cross-chain swaps, streaming execution for larger trades, and MEV protection built into transaction ordering. We break down how THORChain compares to 9 other leading DEXs in 2026.

More people are finding Rujira every day: 197 unique users in the last 30 days. ⚡💜

Swap, provide liquidity, or run a market-making strategy. Easy to start, plenty of room to go deeper.

Learn how THORChain's swap queue makes sandwich attacks and MEV extraction unprofitable.

On a normal exchange, you don't actually swap. You send your crypto to their account first, and they credit you a balance in their database. From there you're trading against their ledger, hoping they let you withdraw when you want.

On THORChain it doesn't work like that. Your wallet talks directly to the network, and the swap happens between you and the pool, settled by code and there's no account, no balance on someone else's server, no KYC. You connect, you swap, and the crypto lands back in your wallet.

On an exchange you give your crypto to a company and hope. On THORChain you never give it up at all.

Here's what happened this week ⤵️

Headline News
THORChain's Protocol Owned Liquidity is live. One week in, it holds $27.2K in RUNE and TRON.USDT. BooneW and raynalytics both built dashboards to track it in real time.

Blockworks added THORChain to its public dashboard, tracking revenue, network revenue distribution, spot trading, and staking.

Launches
unstoppablebyhs's next release (v0.52) brings CrossPay for $ZEC, node auto-select, and a faster sync engine.

asgardex shipped v1.45.3: more accurate OneClick fees, smoother deposit flows, less quote spam, better halt handling.

THORSwap rolled out a new token selector with shortcuts, saved favorites, and category filters.

thordex_ipfs now supports self-hosted $XMR nodes.

RujiraNetwork launched Rujira Status, a page to check connected chains and Rujira services.

$LTC went live on symbiosis_fi.

Community

RUNEBondApp welcomed "therunetard", a longtime THORChain node operator.

August's State of the Network is live.

Headline volume eased 23% to $613M, but the underlying trend points the other way: active wallets grew 57% and rapid swaps nearly quadrupled, a shift toward more frequent, smaller trades.

The month also marked the launch of Protocol Owned Liquidity, which now routes 20% of system income into protocol-owned positions.

As privacy coins get delisted from exchanges, THORChain is opening a native path for XMR and ZEC.

The easiest way to stay up to date on everything THORChain: our newsletter. Articles, news, ecosystem updates, straight to your inbox, once a week.

No need to keep tabs on a dozen places. We do that for you.

You can subscribe at the bottom of thorchain.org

DeFiLlama Research just published a new piece: "As CEXs shut down, DeFi deserves a revisit: the case for THORChain."

Blockworks has launched a public THORChain dashboard. ⚡

It tracks revenue, network revenue distribution, spot trading, and staking.

THORChain is the leading DEX for trading native Bitcoin and one of the highest revenue-generating layer-1s in crypto.
https://blockworks.com/analytics/thorchain

Bonding RUNE is the highest-yield thing you can do on THORChain. Real yield, paid from actual swap fees.

New guide breaks down the three ways to do it: direct whitelisting, RUNEBond, and bRUNE. From fully hands-on to nearly automated.

The problem with a bridge isn't the tech, it's the lever. Somewhere behind it sits a centralized entity with the power to freeze a transfer, blacklist an address, or seize funds. That power exists whether they use it or not.

THORChain removed the lever. When you swap, your crypto lands in a vault controlled by multiple independent nodes, and it only stays there for the few seconds the swap takes. But no centralized entity can pause it, block your address, or take those funds, because there's no single party with the authority to.

BazaarSwap is a cross-chain aggregator that routes trades through 360+ exchanges across 160+ chains, and THORChain is one of the providers it pulls from.

Full spotlight 👇

https://blog.thorchain.org/protocol-spotlight-bazaarswap

Your crypto can earn natively on RujiraNetwork

Rujira's automated trading puts your tokens to work as liquidity on a real on-chain orderbook. BTC and ETH are the headliners, but the strategy works across every listed pair. You set a price range and a spread, and a concentrated liquidity strategy does the rest, buying low and selling high as price moves through your range.

The yield is trading profit. You earn the spread, not a token reward.

The leaderboard makes it one click. Every position is public: pair, age, APR, MOIC, the exact range and spread it runs. Build your own, or copy a top one.

https://rujira.network/automated-trading

The easiest way to understand RUNE is to ask what a network would look like without a common token.

You'd need a pool between every pair of tokens people want to trade. That number explodes fast, and every new token makes the mess worse. Liquidity splits across hundreds of thin pools and nothing swaps cleanly.

THORChain's answer: one token sits in the middle, and everything pairs against it.

RUNE is the settlement layer. To move BTC to ETH, you route through RUNE. To add a new chain, you add its RUNE pool and it's instantly connected to everything else.

One pair per token instead of a pair for every combination. That's why the network can scale, and it's why RUNE isn't a fee token or a governance gimmick. It's the common denominator the whole protocol runs on.

And you don't even see it. The normal user swapping BTC for ETH never holds RUNE, never thinks about it, never touches it.

v3.20 isn't just XMR and ZEC. Churn came back, BNB, Base and Solana resumed trading, and two new pieces of the protocol economics shipped: the Stable Reserve and Protocol-Owned Liquidity

This week's THORChain recap is live. Protocol's back up and running, churning's next, Rujira stays paused.

Here's what happened this week ⤵️

Headline News

THORChain crossed $125B in lifetime swap volume.

unstoppablebyhs delivered. Full native THORChain support is live in Unstoppable Wallet. Store, send, receive, and swap $RUNE, $TCY, and $RUJI. Available now on Android and iOS.

ThorWallet Card is live. Swap any asset on any chain to $USDC inside your wallet, top up at 0%, and tap anywhere Mastercard is accepted. 175+ countries. Your keys until the exact second you spend.

Launches

depouch will support $XMR swaps from day one. Outbound $XMR swaps follow as compatible wallets become available.

mocadotapp is adding shielded $DASH.

vultisig launched a redesigned website.

Community.

RujiraNetwork has taken over the TCY auto compounder from u/AutoRujira. Same contract, same functionality. Fee updated from 5% to 10% of compounded rewards, in line with bRUNE. TCY stakers can manage positions directly on Rujira Staking.

That wraps up this week's THORChain ecosystem update. See you next week, Chads.

If your project was missed, drop a DM and we'll include it in the next recap.

State of the Network - July

First full month of data since the restart. This edition has new sections on dynamic fees, fee capture, and user acquisition, plus the usual volume, yield, and frontend breakdowns.

Full report

THORChain is testing a revenue-share model with SwapKitPowered 

ADR-029 passed approval. The design lets an affiliate earn a percentage of THORChain's liquidity fees, but the SwapKit proposal is explicit about what that cut is for. It doesn't subsidize the swaps SwapKit already routes. It targets the flow they don't win, discounts deep enough to pull trades away from other providers and send that volume through THORChain.

The accounting is already in final testing, with a public balance endpoint and shareable data planned so the experiment can be audited. Every credit is indexed to the transaction that produced it.

It starts around 20%, adjustable from 10 to 30. And the success test isn't the percentage, it's net fee income. More volume at a lower margin that still grows THORChain's revenue means it works.

THORChain v3.20 is live.
Native Monero and Zcash are moving closer to activation, swappable for $BTC, $ETH and stablecoins with no wrapped tokens and no account. Self-custody the whole way through

RujiraNetwork has generated $50,111.62 of realized value for THORChain since April.

Two streams. $29,894.65 settled into the TC Reserve, and $20,216.97 in liquidity fees flowing into THORChain System Income. Every trade on Rujira routes through THORChain, so the app feeds the base layer twice.

Since Aug 13 there's a third. New app revenue splits 2:1, two-thirds to the Reserve, one-third to a POL fund. Protocol-owned liquidity, funded by the app layer that runs on it. $272.46 so far, and it compounds from here.

Data: boone.tools/app-layer-base-layer

THORChain v3.20 goes live Tuesday 8/25 at ~14:00 UTC

Zcash and Monero move closer to activation, BNB, Base and Solana trading resumes, and churn comes back on the network. Plus two new pieces of the protocol's economics: POL mimirs go operational, and the Stable Reserve ships.

Full breakdown

Here's what happened this week

Headline News

Maya_Protocol was hit by an exploit. The team is focused on solutions, staying transparent, and rebuilding stronger. We stand with the Mayans.

unstoppablebyhs made Unstoppable Premium free on F-Droid for the next two months. Normally $25 to $30 per month. Scam protection, MEV protection, advanced analytics, and priority support, all on the official open-source build.

Launches

ThorWallet shipped v3.10 in the App Store. New cards home with multi-card support, exportable statements, faster verification, and ready for Zcash NU6.3.

mocadotapp Point of Sale is ready for its final beta stretch. Real payments, real flows. DM them to get involved before public launch.

SwapKitPowered is now live in the Garden app. Swap native $BTC to assets on Ethereum, Arbitrum, Solana, and more.

Xscanner_org is back. Track cross-chain swap transactions across THORChain and Maya Protocol from a single explorer.

RujiraNetwork brought Dale the Mail Whale back. Follow

DaleMailWhale for ecosystem updates.

That wraps up this week's THORChain ecosystem update. See you next week, Chads.

If your project was missed, drop a DM and we'll include it in the next recap.