Live from Bitcoin Vegas: 2 bps Stable Swaps, v3.18 Next Week and the Affiliate Revshare Plan

THORChain v3.17 went live with a 2 basis point fee tier for stable-to-stable swaps and a 70M $RUNE reserve burn. v3.18 ships next week with the dynamic fee model and the node-side changes for $XMR. Recorded live from Bitcoin Vegas.

THORSday Community Space ft. @CBarraford, @KentonC137 & @patriotsounds | April 30, 2026

By @Raynalytics

TL;DR

THORChain shipped v3.17 with a 2 basis point fee tier for stable-to-stable swaps (turning on live during the recording), a 65M $RUNE reserve burn, and the groundwork for a 9M reserve cap that will redirect roughly 5% more revenue to system income.
v3.18 is targeted for next week and will land the dynamic fee model, P income voting, and the node-side changes needed for $XMR, $TAO, and Substra so future chain launches can ship without waiting for a full version bump.
Revshare is the next major engineering unlock. Chad walked through how dynamic fees plus revshare combine to let THORChain capture more revenue while charging integrators less on net.
Bitcoin Vegas was a networking win: @cakewallet, @EdgeWallet, @BitcoinMagazine, XRP, @QuaiNetwork, and @NanoGPTcom all in scope, plus a 50-person THORChain side event at F1 Arcade.
$XMR launch is on deck with two of the biggest Monero wallets ready day-one. BP yield withdrawal could land in v3.19.

1. Live from Vegas with the team

Kenton and Chad recorded this episode together in Las Vegas at the tail end of Bitcoin 2026, with Denny joining remotely after his own conference run. The whole crew was sick (Chad blamed himself for sharing the bug), running on minimal sleep after several days of nonstop networking, but the energy was high.

Earlier in the week, @patriotsounds drove in with what he openly disclosed was "a dozen guns and a thousand rounds of ammo" in his car for a private property shooting trip with the team. Chad turned out to be the surprise marksman of the day. As Denny put it, "you were on target, dude... like ping ping ping." That Vegas trip set the tone for the whole episode, with the conversation drifting naturally between protocol upgrades, business strategy, and what the team learned from three days of in-person conversations with wallets, media, and other ecosystems.

2. v3.17 is live: 2 bps stables, reserve burn, and a max supply update

@THORChain consensus on v3.17 hit a day or two before the recording. Three meaningful changes came with it.

The headline upgrade is a 2 basis point fee tier for stable-to-stable swaps, with voting already underway during the recording to flip it on. The protocol's flat 10 bps fee priced THORChain out of stable-to-stable flow, where competitors like Near Intents trade at much tighter spreads. @CBarraford estimated stables make up roughly 10% of THORChain volume today versus close to 80% on Near. By dropping the fee on that pair specifically, THORChain becomes competitive on a category it was effectively losing.

"It may even be live now... wait like 24 hours and we'll see what the rates are. I'm quite curious to see what happens."

There is almost no risk attached. STO swaps already route through non-stable pools, so existing 20 bps flows are untouched. And as Chad pointed out, THORChain has zero marginal cost on additional volume: "Whether the pool does a billion dollars in volume or a million dollars in volume, it's the same operating cost."

The 65M $RUNE reserve burn went through with v3.17, but total supply now sits at roughly 360.14M, slightly above the 360M target. The burn PR was generated when the reserve number was different, and the reserve has accrued small income since. The fix is already merged: a max supply cap on the reserve (likely 9M) that will redirect any reserve income above that threshold back into block emissions, distributed to nodes and $TCY holders. Chad estimated this is roughly a 5% bump in system income, "which is obviously not massive but it's also nothing either."

The current supply on CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap, and @MessariCrypto shows 360.14M. The max supply field is a manual update that requires nodes to vote down to 360M before Kenton can prove the new figure to listing platforms. Chad added that the max supply mimir is largely a vestigial sanity check from the lending era, and he would prefer it just track total supply going forward.

3. v3.18 is shipping next week

Despite v3.17 only just landing, v3.18 is targeted for next week, an unusually fast cadence. Three major changes are bundled in:

P income voting: Nodes can begin redirecting a share of system income to P holders.
Node changes for $XMR, $TAO, and Substra: With the chain client logic in place, future integrations do not need a version bump to launch.
Dynamic fee model: Chad's preferred revenue lever. Fees flex by pair instead of holding flat, letting THORChain match or undercut competitors automatically.

"I'm just so jazzed and excited about the effects of these features that we just want to move them along as fast as possible."

Revshare did not make it into v3.18 (still being designed), but Chad sees it as the next major unlock and floated v3.19 as a target.

4. Restructuring the game: dynamic fees plus revshare

Chad walked through how the dynamic fee model and a future revshare combine into something he believes will reshape THORChain's competitive position. The logic stacks in tiers:

Today (static 10 bps): THORChain captures roughly 4% of @SwapKitPowered volume, down from near 100% two years ago.
With dynamic fees: THORChain auto-prices to roughly match competitors, capturing far more volume and fees.
With dynamic fees plus revshare: THORChain can charge slightly higher fees (say 6 bps when Near is at 5) and kick a portion back to integrating wallets, so they recommend THORChain on revshare grounds even when not the cheapest on raw price.
End state: Wallets integrate THORChain directly, skipping SwapKit's 25 bps markup, and THORChain captures even more.

"We are completely restructuring the game."

Kenton drove the revshare motivation: a prominent interface told the team they would rather receive a revshare than mark up the affiliate fee on top of the protocol. That conversation kicked it onto Chad's roadmap. Kenton also pointed to Binance's early years, when an aggressive revshare program turned thousands of independent salespeople into a global growth engine. With Thornames as the gating mechanism, THORChain can offer the same model permissionlessly: no out-of-pocket marketing spend, paid only when integrators generate volume.

"It's so obvious to me at this point... I'm hesitant to say this because I don't want to eat my words, but I'm very bullish."

5. BP yield withdrawal: a v3.19 candidate

A new BP from the $TAO community asked Kenton about the ability to take out yield while staying bonded longer-term. Chad confirmed it is a feature he is open to building, possibly in v3.19. The mechanism: track principal versus accrued interest per bond, allow BPs to unbond up to the interest portion only, with a cap (perhaps 25% of principal) to handle edge cases like 5+ year bonds with no churns. Each turn-out and re-bond resets the principal baseline.

The bigger picture, raised by Denny, is that yield-bearing BPs become a serious income product for retiring boomers, pension funds, and institutions chasing real yield outside the traditional bond and real estate markets. With churns happening every three days, THORChain effectively pays a dividend on a faster cadence than @saylor's STRC stretch preferred shares.

Kenton floated extending it further: have the protocol auto-swap yield into a chosen asset ($USDC, $BTC, $ETH) before sending to the bond address, mirroring how affiliate fees already accumulate in chosen assets. He also pitched zero-fee swaps for BP yield as a marketing hook ("DCA into Bitcoin by running a node"). Chad said he would be open to it, since the gate is bonding capital, not just trade volume.

6. Bitcoin Vegas: 50 RSVPs, real conversations, and a swag strategy

The team's side event at F1 Arcade pulled around 40 to 50 attendees out of 100+ RSVPs. Kenton called the venue cost-effective, with a shoutout to @Scorch_ed_ for sourcing it. Highlights of the trip:

@MarkMoneyMason, media lead at @BitcoinMagazine, who Denny described as deeply aligned with THORChain's ethos. He has a long Dash history through @TheDesertLynx and was excited about the upcoming $XMR launch. Potential follow-up: a Mark Mason interview with Chad post-launch.
@cakewallet and @EdgeWallet: both on track to be ready for $XMR day-one, covering an estimated ~90% of $XMR holdings between them. Chad called this the strongest wallet readiness for any chain launch since Terra.
A debate with Seth for Privacy (@sethforprivacy, Cake Wallet) on whether THORChain reduces $XMR privacy because of public on-chain settlement. Chad's counter: the marginal privacy reduction is real but small, while the volume increase to $XMR overall improves ring signature quality and broader privacy. The simple workaround is a second $XMR wallet hop after the swap.
XRP meetup: Denny pitched $XRP holders on using THORChain plus $XMR to break KYC linkage on their bags, a narrative he sees as cross-chain-wide rather than XRP-specific. Real interest there. Denny also noted RLUSD has both XRPL and ERC-20 versions, with the ERC-20 currently doing more volume.
@QuaiNetwork (energy-based stablecoin) and @NanoGPTcom, the privacy AI service. Kenton flagged that Nano-GPT currently routes through a centralized exchange with an obvious attack vector that THORChain solves cleanly. If Nano-GPT integrates and brings even modest stable-to-stable volume, it pays for the entire side event many times over.

The team also converged on a swag strategy for future conferences: branded hats, t-shirts, hoodies, and travel sponsorship for community ambassadors. SodaMax already showed up to Vegas with self-made THORChain swag, exactly the energy worth funding. If you live near a major conference and want to represent THORChain, reach out to @KentonC137, the marketing fund will cover swag and tickets where it makes sense.

A nice moment from the trip: @BooneW told the team how appreciative he was that the protocol implemented some of his ideas. As Denny framed it, anyone can be a contributor to THORChain if the idea is good. Strong opinions, loosely held, with merit winning over ego.

"We're not here to sniff our own farts. We're here to figure out what works."

7. Token Terminal, churn, and miscellaneous protocol updates

Kenton is in active conversations with @tokenterminal to get THORChain listed with normalized fee accounting (affiliate fees plus layer-1 fees combined, matching @MessariCrypto methodology). On methodology: this is how Near Intents reports its numbers, and Kenton sees it as the apples-to-apples comparison required to rank fairly.

A meaningful shoutout from Kenton: @Raynalytics helped get the Token Terminal integration cost down by handling the technical lift on the data side. "Ray very well could have been instrumental in helping us get these costs down... thank you, Ray."

During the recording, Kenton also pulled up raynalytics.net dashboard live to demo the top swap paths by volume (BTC -> ETH, ETH -> BTC, BTC -> USDT, BTC -> USDC, USDC -> BTC) and confirmed that stable-to-stable does not crack STO top five today, meaning the new 2 bps tier costs almost nothing on existing flows.

On churns: a couple of nodes have gone quiet on alerts and stalled the most recent churn cycle. Chad emphasized that @Zcash integration is gated on the next churn, so node operators should check their setups. @therunetard remains the resource for new operators getting started.

On the mobile app side: @RujiraNetwork's STO is exploring pass key wallets (a single key tied to native phone biometrics that unlocks any seed across compatible interfaces). Near Intents already uses this. The challenge with a native iOS app is Apple's discretion to pull it for swap flows they disagree with, so the team is leaning toward Android-first or a browser-app architecture.

8. Samurai Wallet, privacy, and the regulatory window

Denny met @KeonneRodriguez's wife at the conference and got her to agree to come on the podcast. (Keonne is the Samurai Wallet co-founder currently facing federal charges, alongside Roman Storm of @TornadoCash, in what @naomibrockwell characterized as a witch hunt.) The episode will give her a platform to share their side of the case and potentially raise legal defense funds.

On THORChain's exposure to similar pressure, Chad recounted that in 2022, three-letter agencies opened conversations with him asking for protocol-level changes. He spent months educating his attorneys, who then educated the agencies on how the training functions and the (now-deprecated) admin keys actually worked. The agencies walked away once they understood that the changes they wanted weren't technically achievable within THORChain's architecture.

"That's the perfect outcome you want."

The team agreed: the current administration is comparatively friendly to crypto code-as-speech, and that window will not last forever. The strategy is to ship aggressively while clarity holds. Chad is open to revisiting native privacy on THORChain if the legal landscape clears further, but considers it lower priority than the AMM and fee work in flight.

9. What This Means

Chad's framing throughout the episode: THORChain is now in a position no AMM was supposed to be in. Every meaningful parameter (fees, timing, routing) is configurable, which makes business-side innovations like dynamic fees and revshare possible without the static AMM math fighting back. The protocol kept its first-principles foundations through the bear market while competitors took shortcuts they now cannot unwind. v3.17, v3.18, and v3.19 each ship a feature that monetizes that flexibility.

"Product market fit is actually a very hard thing to achieve. Very few projects in crypto have actually reached it."

The bullish setup: stables turning on at 2 bps immediately, dynamic fees and Monero next week, revshare and BP yield withdrawal in the version after that, and a Bitcoin Vegas pipeline of wallet, media, and ecosystem integrations to convert.

"Price performance is the best marketing ever you can ask for."

10. Takeaways and What to Watch

Stable-to-stable volume: Watch the dashboards over the next 24 to 72 hours for the impact of the 2 bps fee tier on volume.
v3.18 next week: Dynamic fee model, $XMR/$TAO/Substra node changes, and P income voting.
Churn cycle: Zcash and other queued integrations are blocked on the next clean churn. Node operators should check their setups.
v3.19 candidates: Revshare framework and BP yield withdrawal both on Chad's roadmap.
$XMR launch: Edge and Cake Wallet ready day-one. Cross-marketing window is the highest-leverage moment, especially with Bitcoin Magazine and the XRP and Dash communities now warm.
Saturday podcast: Denny is hosting Hassen (@Goatskey) of @BiorLabs. Kenton will be traveling.
Conference ambassadors wanted: If you live near a major conference and want to represent THORChain, reach out to Kenton.