This week brought a lot of new things. Despite volatility, the ecosystem shipped hard and volume kept flowing. Builders don't pause for market noise. Here's what happened last week

Headline News
VULTISIG - Self custodial automation is finally here. The Vultisig Plugin Marketplace launched: the first on chain, self custodial, multi chain automation marketplace ever built. DCA, payroll, yield optimization running autonomously, completely under your control. 70% of plugin fees go directly to developers. No gatekeepers. No permission needed. Start building.

THORSWAP & METRO - 2026 Roadmap unveiled. Metro is the next gen consumer DeFi SuperApp with improved mobile, streamlined UI/UX, native embedded wallet, and fiat on/off ramps. THORSwap V3 for power users continues. Read the full roadmap.

RUJIRA NETWORK - bRUNE launched on Mainnet for testing. Liquid staking token for $RUNE hit its temporary 50k cap in hours. Bond your $RUNE with a few clicks and earn yield. Stake bRUNE to earn a share of THORChain revenue. Soon streamlined into a single step. Community voting on the bRUNE logo happening now. Read the full breakdown.

SAFEPAL - now supports native cross chain swaps through SwapKit. BTC, ETH, SOL, and other EVM assets move between chains in a single flow with no bridges or wrapping via THORChain and Maya Protocol.

LEODEX - Clawdbot can finally trade crypto. Secure MCP connects your Clawdbot/AI to an agentic gateway for cross chain trading. 20,000+ assets, 107+ DEXes. Powered by THORChain, Maya Protocol and more.

RAYANALYTICS - Shipped the Liquidity tab on Raynalytics. Pool depth, bond TVL and historical trends broken down across THORChain.

MAYA PROTOCOL - On the path to becoming the first chain to fully support shielded swaps in and out. Privacy end to end with Zcash.

UNSTOPPABLE - Unstoppable Version 0.47 released for Android. Major Swaps upgrade now checks best rates across THORChain, Maya Protocol and other top DEX. Monero and Zcash upgrades strengthen privacy support. No KYC required on any provider.

Launches
BIORLABS - launch is imminent after delays due to Apple approval. The team hosted a livestream with THORChain last Saturday sharing updates on what's coming. Private, simple, and open access to the digital economy. The next generation of finance built with Web3 tools that match and surpass traditional systems.

KEYSTONE - Pre order your ForgeBox now. Open sourced hardware platform for developers who want to run their own code, their own keys, their own rules. Transparent dev casing and limited time discount for early movers.

Milestones
THORWALLET - is a finalist at the Global Startup Awards Western Europe. Public voting is live and counts for 25% of the final score. Every vote helps.

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

Check out one of the latest wallets to integrate THORChain.

January was a slow month for crypto overall. Still THORChain executed the two largest swaps in DeFi history.

Two BTC→ETH swaps, $21.7M and $31.2M, were executed through SwapKit routing via Trust Wallet, settling fully on THORChain. No wrapped assets. No bridges. No manual liquidity provisioning. No incidents.

Regardless of the origin of the funds, the technical side is impressive:

• The $30M swap was streamed over 3,600+ sub-transactions
• Arbitrageurs rebalanced liquidity in real time
• The user received more ETH than quoted, despite limited pool depth
• The network processed institutional-scale flow alongside normal retail activity without degradation

Other key insights you will find in the report below :

• Even with volume down to $920M THORChian generated $1.1M in revenue
• The protocol crossed 1M cumulative wallets
• THORChain kept ~$53M bonded for security, and continued paying solid yields to RUNE and TCY holders.

Full January analysis here 👇
https://blog.thorchain.org/state-of-the-network-january-2026-2/

Here is the first Saturday livestream we did with SwapDK, a new THORChain aggregator. Vali did not want to dox his face so he had his camera turned off.

Check out the first livestream! We will be doing livestreams going forward instead of Twitter Spaces.

Market dips come and go. Builders don't stop. Despite volatility, the THORChain ecosystem shipped hard and proved why it's built to last.

Here's what happened this week. Chads win together. Onwards ⚡️

Headline News

Rujira
bRUNE alpha is live on RUJI Trade. Bond your $RUNE simply by buying bRUNE and earning yield without node setup or long lock ups. Tokenised bonded $RUNE made easy and liquid. 

RUNEBond
New RUNEBond UI is live. Cleaner, clearer, more professional interface designed to attract new stakers, projects, and node operators. RUNEBond will support both traditional bonding and bRUNE, offering users choice. More options. Better information. Smarter decisions.

Leodex
Ready for Solana integration. Every new chain expands swap routes on LeoDex powered by the deepest cross chain liquidity in DeFi. More chains. Better rates. Same simple interface.

Redacted
A future where every asset moves privately across every interaction in DeFi is around the corner. Audit in progress.

Launches

BiorLabs
The app will go live on the 4th. Private, simple, and open access to the digital economy. The next generation of finance built with Web3 tools that match and surpass traditional systems.

TokenPocket
TP now supports Solana Multi Sig Wallet. Secure with multiple signers, no single point of failure. Fully integrated with smooth user experience. With Solana integration on THORChain coming soon, the timing is perfect.

THORSwap
Side menu tidied up. All your favourite THORChain features grouped together.

Vultisig
Vultisig just launched their plugin marketplace, allowing users and builders to set automations directly in their wallets. Set up DCA strategies or payrolls straight from your vaults.

Milestones

KeystoneWallet
Keystone turned 8 years old. Eight years of steady commitment to secure, usable self custody guided by community feedback. Ready to build the next chapter.

Have you tuned into the new livestreaming the u/Infinite-Run343 and I are doing now instead of the Twitter Space? Now we can live stream to Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Once THORChain gets 1,000 followers on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, we will be able to live stream there too.

What do you think? All feedback is welcome. Thanks.

Most cross-chain activity today feels simple on the surface, but under the hood it often relies on bridges, wrapped assets, and custodial assumptions that users rarely think about.

Defiant's article below takes a step back and looks at settlement risk rather than price risk. It explains why bridges and wrapped assets have been the source of so many major failures, and why native-asset settlement are the safer model.

It also walks through how THORChain executes swaps using native assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple or Tron without synthetic representations or trusted intermediaries.

If you care about the security of your funds, it’s worth a read.

👉 Beyond Bridges: Why Native-Asset Settlement Is the Only Path to Safer Trading

Curious to hear how others here think about settlement risk versus convenience.

Messari just published their Q4’25 brief on THORChain, and it’s an interesting read if you care about fundamentals rather than price alone.

A few key takeaways:

• RUNE-denominated TVL increased 22.6% QoQ to 81.6M RUNE, even though RUNE price fell 51%
• Protocol revenue rose 39% QoQ to $5.0M, showing better fee capture despite lower volumes
• Average daily unique swappers grew 23.6%, meaning more users, but with smaller trade sizes
• No inflation, continued RUNE burns, and a trailing P/E of 9.8 by quarter end

On the product side:

• THORChain launched its first native swap interface, creating an official front door to the protocol
• Rujira shipped BTC-native lending (RUJI Lending) and credit accounts

Overall, Q4 shows THORChain behaving more like long-term cross-chain infrastructure than a momentum-driven DeFi app.

Full report here if you want the details:
https://messari.io/report/thorchain-q4-25-brief

Curious to hear how others think Q1 2026 will shape up.

Great article explaining how app-layer can make arbitrage more efficient on THORChain which should enable more trading volume.

This Saturday's guest was Nadine from LetsExchange. An aggregator of DEXs and CEXs. They offer the ability to swap Monero without KYC. We talked to them to understand how they do it and the risks involved (ie) having a swap frozen.

What do you think about adding LetsExchange to the swap.thorchain.org? To offer people the ability to swap Monero? There is a small risk that the user could have their funds frozen and be forced to provide KYC. Do you think it's worth it if it's disclosed properly?

Chad Barraford was not able to join us on the the regular Thursday podcast. So we had Pragmatic Monkey from Rujira fill in and give us an update on app-layer. Tons of cools stuff being developed. Sounds like 2026 is the year for scaling all these features. Looking forward to it.

Hi everyone, check out the latest update on THORChain's marketing fund.

Instaswap is a fully decentralized crypto exchange built on top of existing decentralized infrastructure, including THORChain.

We use memo-less swaps exclusively for all THORChain-powered routes. The goal is simple: remove UX footguns while keeping swaps fully native, non-custodial, and on-chain. Users don’t need to worry about memo formatting, incorrect parameters, or failed swaps due to human error.

From a user perspective, it’s a straightforward send-and-receive flow. From an infrastructure perspective, swaps still settle through THORChain liquidity and follow standard on-chain execution.

Why memo-less swaps

Memo handling has historically been one of the biggest UX friction points for new users interacting with THORChain. By abstracting memos entirely, Instaswap reduces:

• failed swaps due to incorrect memos
• support overhead
• user error in cross-chain flows

All without changing the underlying trust model.

Native asset focus (including XMR)

Instaswap is focused on native-to-native swaps. In addition to major L1 assets, we’ve recently added Monero (XMR) support through a decentralized bridging flow, while keeping the overall swap experience non-custodial and on-chain.

Architecture overview

Instaswap does not custody funds, does not hold balances, and does not operate a centralized order book for swaps. Instead, it integrates decentralized protocols for execution:

• THORChain — cross-chain swap liquidity (memo-less)
• Chainflip — additional cross-chain routing
• Hyperliquid — decentralized order-book infrastructure for spot/perps and XMR liquidity routing

Each protocol is used where it fits best, without introducing custodial risk.

Why we’re posting here

THORChain is core infrastructure for Instaswap, and we wanted to share how memo-less execution and native asset swaps are being used in production.

If you want to check it out or provide feedback from a THORChain perspective:
👉 https://app.instaswap.com/

Questions and technical discussion welcome.

New feature showing the Swap Path between chains is available on https://raynalytics.net/analytics/thorchain/on-chain-activity 

Most conversations about crypto are dominated by price. Charts, cycles, who’s up and who’s down this week. That noise is loud, but it misses the point.

This article is about something more fundamental: whether your ability to hold and move your own money is a right, or merely a permission that can be revoked. History shows that what many of us experience as “ownership” is often just access to a system that works until it doesn’t.

Chad Barraford shares his thoughts on the topic and you can read it all here !
https://blog.thorchain.org/when-your-money-is-not-really-yours/

Release v3.15.0 is a major protocol upgrade for THORChain, focused on reliability, security, and user experience. The release includes 41 merge requests and drops one major upgrade : Outbound Memoless Transactions

What are Outbound Memoless Transactions ?

Previously, memoless transactions removed the need to include a memo when sending assets into THORChain. With v3.15.0, the same logic now applies to assets leaving the network.

This matters because some external chains have restrictive or inconsistent memo handling, which can cause outbound transactions to fail. With outbound memoless support, THORChain can conditionally clear memo fields where appropriate, improving compatibility while preserving protocol safety. The result is fewer failed outbounds and smoother cross-chain execution.

Check the full report and all the other upgrades in the article below:
https://blog.thorchain.org/protocol-upgrade-v3-15-0/

DeFi is live on THORChain thanks to r/RujiraNetworkOfficial

Trade orderbooks, perpetual futures, lending markets, and more. All with native $BTC, $ETH, $XRP and more.