Founder Spotlight: Boone Wheeler

Boone Wheeler is one of THORChain's most outspoken community contributors, known for his research into the protocol's economics, his advocacy for protocol-owned liquidity, and his work on the Monero integration. He's also the creator of Boone.Tools, a collection of dashboards that gives the community a closer look at THORChain's performance, liquidity, and governance.

We spoke with Boone about how he discovered THORChain, the contributions he's most proud of, and why he believes the protocol is getting closer to realizing its full potential.

Your THORChain Origin Story

What originally drew you to THORChain, and what made you start contributing to the protocol?

I first got into Bitcoin in 2017. I also messed around with Monero back then, so I wasn't exactly a Bitcoin maximalist, but I didn't spend much time exploring the rest of crypto until 2021. I had a friend who was much more into it, and he kept telling me there was this thing called DeFi that I'd really like. Eventually, he convinced me to look beyond Bitcoin, and I got into Crypto Twitter and went down the rabbit hole.

What first caught my eye about THORChain was Andrew Kang's liquidity black hole thesis. I'm a value investor at heart. That's just how my brain works. I don't really chase meme coins or whatever happens to be popular. I like investments that I think have fundamental value. I own precious metals, I bought some SpaceX because I think it's a cool company, and I approach crypto investments in much the same way.

THORChain stood out because it's one of the only crypto protocols that's actually profitable. I don't think it gets nearly enough recognition for that. But the underlying thesis is even more important to me: permissionless money needs a permissionless market.

I think the whole point of crypto is to separate money from the state. If you have permissionless money like Bitcoin, you also need a permissionless way to exchange it. THORChain provides that infrastructure, and hopefully soon it'll do the same for Monero. I think the total addressable market for permissionless cross-chain swaps is just ginormous. That's been my core thesis for about five years, and it really hasn't changed.

As for contributing, that happened pretty organically. I'm detail-oriented, and I started noticing discrepancies in how THORChain was being explained. I'd see two statements that contradicted each other, and I'd think, well, these both can't be true. I'm confused, and I don't like being confused.

So I started digging into the documentation and trying to understand how things actually worked instead of just accepting whatever someone said on Twitter or Discord. The more I learned, the more misinformation I noticed. I'd see something that wasn't correct and explain why it was wrong. If someone asked a question and I knew the answer, I'd help them out.

Eventually, I started writing educational threads and longer research pieces. Over time, I became one of the more knowledgeable people in the community simply because I kept following my curiosity and trying to get to the bottom of things.

That's also where Boone.Tools comes from. I wanted people to be able to see the actual data rather than argue about different interpretations. This is what the chain says. You can't argue with the chain.

I never really set out to become a contributor. I just kept learning, and the more you know, the more capable you become of contributing. That's pretty much how everything I've worked on has happened.

Contributions to THORChain

You've contributed to THORChain through research, economic proposals, and development work. Which contributions are you most proud of?

One of the first things I'm proud of was an article I wrote in 2024 about the risks associated with Savers and synthetic assets.

I realized there was something seriously wrong with how Savers worked, and I brought it up in Discord around March 2024. One of the core developers pushed back on what I was saying, but I was convinced I was right. So I spent probably 30 hours writing a detailed article explaining how THORChain's swap pools worked, how Savers were essentially synthetic assets, and why those synthetics could be dangerous for liquidity providers.

I coined the term synth leverage to explain the problem. My argument was that the system had created a serious risk of a blowup. Unfortunately, that's essentially what happened with the THORFi unwind.

The article didn't prevent anything, but I think it did help establish my credibility. People don't necessarily agree with everything I say, but I think they're at least more willing to listen to my arguments now.

Another thing I'm proud of is advocating for the removal of block rewards. THORChain's tokenomics had become pretty complicated, and I spent time trying to explain how everything worked and why I believed continued block emissions were hurting the protocol.

I was also talking to THORChain Bull privately and arguing that we needed to end block rewards. That eventually made its way into his proposal and then into Aaluxx's Proposition 6, which included ending block rewards. I can't say for certain how much influence I had, but I'm pretty confident that my advocacy played a role in getting that change implemented.

I also wrote about some of the economic problems introduced by the app layer and secured assets, particularly how they affected the incentive pendulum and THORChain's economic security. I don't think all those issues have been fully addressed. We essentially abandoned some of the original economic security assumptions, and I don't love that. I'm pretty conservative when it comes to these things.

Then there's protocol-owned liquidity. On July 1, 2025, I published an article formally making the case that THORChain should stop burning RUNE and instead use that capital to build protocol-owned liquidity. It took more than a year, but we finally got there, and I'm very happy about that.

And then there's Monero. I've been pushing for Monero support for years because I believe privacy is essential to financial freedom. Earlier this year, I realized that the technical pieces needed for the integration already existed, and I wondered whether AI could help put them together. It turned out that it could, and that's how I ended up building the original proof of concept for the Monero chain client.

I think the common thread behind all of these contributions is that I see something I believe is wrong or could be improved, and I try to do something about it. Sometimes that means writing an article, sometimes it's arguing for an economic change, and sometimes it's actually building something.

THORChain's Economic Model

What do you think about THORChain's current economic model, and where do you still see opportunities for improvement?

I think we're getting really close.

One thing I'd like to see eventually is the removal of liquidity provider rewards. Now that we have POL, I think it's a far superior way to provide liquidity to the protocol.

Because the total amount of bonded RUNE has increased, LPs are receiving rewards again through the incentive pendulum. But I think that money could be put to better use. It could go to bond providers, POL, or somewhere else where it would benefit the protocol more.

There's no immediate rush to change that, but I do think LP rewards should eventually be deprecated.

The other thing, and I really consider this the last major piece of the puzzle, is base-layer limit orders, or BLOs. I've been advocating for them since around April, and I think they could make a massive difference to THORChain.

I'm going to sidestep the technical details, but the big picture is that BLOs will turn THORChain's arbitrageurs into market makers. In doing so, they'll improve swap quotes considerably for users.

If you think about it from first principles, better swap execution should lead to more trading volume, which generates more revenue for the protocol. Anything we can do to improve swap quotes is a good thing.

I believe BLOs could potentially cut the cost of swaps in half. And they could be much faster, too. You could have million-dollar swaps happening within a single block, rather than requiring multiple blocks to execute.

And the really nice thing is that this could happen without costing the protocol any revenue. You're getting better execution, cheaper swaps, and faster transactions without having to sacrifice the economics that make THORChain profitable.

That's why I'm so excited about BLOs. I think they're one of the most important improvements THORChain can make, and once they're implemented, we'll be very close to having all the major pieces in place.

The Importance of Protocol-Owned Liquidity

You've been one of the strongest advocates for protocol-owned liquidity. How important do you think POL will be for THORChain's future?

I think POL addresses a bunch of problems all at the same time.

After the THORFi unwind, the incentive pendulum stopped directing rewards toward liquidity providers. That meant there wasn't really an incentive for new liquidity to enter THORChain's swap pools.

If we wanted to integrate another blockchain, there wasn't much reason for anyone to deposit liquidity and help bootstrap the new pool. So it became the responsibility of the treasury to provide that capital.

But the treasury isn't the protocol. It's independently managed, and that distinction is important. THORChain had essentially become dependent on the treasury to open new pools and provide liquidity where it was needed.

And if a pool didn't have enough liquidity, users wouldn't get good swap execution. So we had this situation where we needed more liquidity to improve execution and attract volume, but there wasn't a mechanism to bring that liquidity into the pools.

POL solves that problem.

Now the protocol has a way to add its own liquidity to pools that need it. That liquidity is permanent in the sense that it isn't dependent on an outside LP deciding to withdraw their funds, and it's productive capital because it can earn fees for the protocol.

So it reduces reliance on the treasury and makes THORChain more independent. Not only is the protocol decentralized, but now the liquidity itself can become more decentralized. I think that's really cool.

THORChain needs liquidity in its pools to function. If you're building a decentralized, permissionless swap protocol, you should ideally have decentralized, permissionless liquidity that doesn't depend on any outside source.

There's also the revenue aspect. To the degree that deeper liquidity improves swap execution and enables trades that otherwise wouldn't have happened, POL can help generate more income for the protocol. That revenue can then support additional liquidity, which further improves execution.

Another benefit is that POL can free up capital that the treasury has already deposited.

For example, when we spoke, around $400,000 had entered the XRP pool through POL over the previous five days. That pool already had roughly $1 million in liquidity, so suddenly it was sitting at around $1.5 million.

Now, the XRP pool had been experiencing unusually high volume because of hacked funds moving through THORChain. Under normal conditions, it wouldn't necessarily need that much liquidity.

So instead of leaving all that capital sitting in an overcapitalized pool, the treasury could withdraw an amount equivalent to what POL had added and put those funds to work somewhere else.

That's a really nice benefit because it allows the treasury to reclaim capital that had previously been tied up supporting THORChain's liquidity.

I also like that POL allocations are based on the performance of different pools. Rather than having people argue over which pools deserve more liquidity, there's a mechanism for allocating capital based on actual data.

To me, POL is one of the most important economic improvements THORChain has made. It addresses the liquidity problem, reduces dependence on external parties, and helps the protocol become more self-sustaining.

What's Next for THORChain?

What upcoming integrations or features are you most excited about, and why should other people be excited about them too?

Well, base-layer limit orders are obviously one of the big ones. I've already talked about why I think they're so important. Better execution, cheaper swaps, and potentially much faster transactions. I think that feature is going to be huge.

The other one is, of course, Monero.

I've been advocating for Monero for a long time, and I'm really proud to have contributed to the chain client. I built the core backbone of the integration, essentially the proof of concept that showed the different pieces could work together.

A lot of other people have worked on it since then, and I absolutely couldn't have done the whole thing myself. But I did build that original core, and once Monero goes live, that's something I'm going to be very proud of.

I think it's an absolute game changer.

To me, privacy is necessary for sovereignty. There's a reason Monero has been delisted from almost every centralized exchange. I think that shows how much of a threat the existing financial system considers it to be.

If THORChain can provide permissionless rails for people to enter and exit Monero, I think that's a huge contribution to financial freedom. People should be able to exchange their money without needing permission from an exchange or another intermediary.

And I also think it's going to be very profitable for THORChain. So it's a win-win.

Beyond Monero, I'd love to see more chains and more pools added to the protocol. Every new chain creates additional opportunities, and now that we have POL, there's a mechanism to help provide liquidity for new pools.

For example, THORChain currently supports native SOL on Solana, but I'd love to see other assets from that ecosystem become available. USDT on Solana would be a good example. There's no reason we should stop at supporting just one asset from a network if there's demand for more.

I think the treasury could help seed additional pools, and then POL could take over supporting their liquidity as those markets develop.

There are plenty of smaller improvements I'd like to see, but if we're talking about the big picture, Monero and BLOs are the two developments that matter most to me.

Once we have XMR and base-layer limit orders, I think that's probably 95% of the puzzle for THORChain. Everything else is incremental improvement from there.