$XMR Is Coming: Monero on THORChain in 1-2 Months

THORSday Community Space ft. @CBarraford, @KentonC137 & @patriotsounds | April 9, 2026

By @Raynalytics

TL;DR

• Monero ($XMR) is targeting mainnet in 1-2 months. Boone's chain client PR passed simulation tests. Chad is reviewing the codebase and expects it merged in ~2 weeks, with stagenet/chaosnet testing to follow.
• Bittensor ($TAO) is being developed in parallel, with Chad aiming to ship both $XMR and $TAO on mainnet around the same time.
• Zcash ($ZEC) is targeting mainnet by end of April, with StarSquid leading the implementation.
• Rapid swaps hit a $1.6M single swap and are now approaching 50% of total THORChain volume.
• Protocol-Owned Liquidity (POL) is shipping in release 3.18, with an algorithmic system to deploy system income into the pools that need it most.

1. Monero: The Stars Have Finally Aligned

This was the headline of the night. @BooneW's Monero chain client has passed simulation tests, meaning you can do inbound swaps, outbound swaps, add liquidity, and withdraw liquidity on a local THORChain network with $XMR. Chad called this his "litmus test," and Boone passed it.

Chad has since gone deep into the codebase, leaving extensive comments on the merge request. His verdict: it fundamentally works at a high level. There are changes needed, both big and small, but nothing that's particularly difficult.

The biggest technical challenge is observability. Because $XMR is a privacy chain, you can't see outbound transactions unless you hold the private key for the vault. With THORChain's current six Asgard vaults, the ~80 nodes outside a given vault would have to trust the ~20 nodes inside it, which is a weak security posture. Between churns, there would be no way to independently verify that funds hadn't been moved.

The solution: create a single dedicated Asgard vault for Monero with all 100+ active validators as members. This is possible because Monero uses Frost cryptography (from Luke Parker's @kayabaNerve / Serai project), which is more efficient than the GG20 signing THORChain currently uses for other chains. Every validator can independently verify that funds are where they should be.

"All the pieces are now together. Lots of little small changes as well, but totally doable. Nothing even difficult really, to be honest."

Chad also highlighted that several other "ducks in a row" had to line up first: memoless transactions (which weren't available years ago but have been running on stagenet for months), Monero's 16-byte memo limit (far too small for swap memos, making memoless essential), and AI-assisted development as an accelerant. Luke Parker's open-source Frost implementation, originally built for Serai, provided the critical cryptographic foundation that Boone then integrated with THORNode.

On timeline: the merge request could be merged into develop within ~2 weeks. From there, it goes to stagenet/chaosnet for testing (2-4 weeks). After testing, it goes to mainnet starting with a small pool (around $10K), with the treasury as the primary LP. Chad is targeting 1-2 months to mainnet, closer to two.

"Bringing Monero on, it's a zero to one in crypto history, and we're all a part of it."

Denny reported the Telegram groups are in "pure euphoria." Node operators are cheering Boone, JP, and Chad. JP was spotted grinding 6-8 hours on Easter, and @jpthor's energy is infectious. Even @Maya_Protocol's dev pitched in.

Kenton cautioned on marketing: the plan is to manage expectations, underpromise, and overdeliver. Expect some pauses and bugs early on. The messaging will emphasize this is the most complex chain THORChain has ever added, and users should start with small amounts.

"XMR is not XMR without THORChain."

2. Bittensor and Zcash: Shipping in Parallel

Chad wants to launch $TAO (@bittensor) and $XMR at roughly the same time on mainnet, embracing a parallel development approach. Both chains are targeting the 3.18 release window. AI-assisted coding has made this feasible in a way it wouldn't have been even six months ago, dramatically lowering the cost and time to produce new chain clients.

@Zcash is even closer. @starsquid_io is leading the implementation, and Chad confirmed the target is $ZEC live on mainnet by end of April. The first implementation won't include shielded addresses, but it's another privacy-oriented chain joining the THORChain ecosystem.

Chad addressed the community question about why they're not borrowing Maya Protocol's Zcash implementation directly. He said he left the decision to StarSquid, who has his own approach. If it turns out not to be the right call, they can pivot later.

Source: Raynalytics

3. Rapid Swaps Gaining Traction

The largest single rapid swap has now hit $1.6 million. Yesterday, rapid swaps accounted for nearly 50% of total THORChain volume, a significant milestone.

Chad said this is what he's been waiting for: arbitrageurs stepping up and adapting. Rapid swaps are still set to the minimum (2 confirmations). Chad wants to see at least half the trade volume or half the number of swaps consistently using rapid swaps before increasing to 3 confirmations.

He also floated an idea of the protocol arbing its own pools, using the oracle price as the source, and directing the yield to system income. Meanwhile, @RujiraNetwork has already launched a concentrated liquidity/arbing mechanism on the app layer and is scaling it up over the coming month.

Source: Raynalytics

4. Protocol-Owned Liquidity: Growing Our Own Depth

Release 3.18 will include the system income to POL mechanism, building on ADR24. Here's how it works: node operators vote on a percentage of system income to redirect into pool liquidity. The protocol then algorithmically determines which pool gets the capital, based on a rolling 24-hour revenue-to-depth ratio. The pools with the highest fees relative to their depth get filled first.

In practice, this means the newer, smaller pools (Solana, Zcash, Monero, $TAO) will receive most of the capital, which is exactly where it's needed most. Pools with paused LPing (like $BTC) are excluded automatically.

Chad estimated ~$200K/month at current revenue levels. That's enough to meaningfully bootstrap two new pools at $100K depth each.

"Instead of hiring mercenary capital, we just grow our own liquidity."

Kenton made the case that the more aggressively they seed POL now, the bigger the compounding returns later. Denny agreed, noting that protocol-owned liquidity removes the dependency on human LPs and their whims. When $RUNE price eventually rises, arbitrage volume will deepen these pools even further.

@PragmaticMonkey from Rujira also proposed directing some POL income into the concentrated arbing mechanism, which could keep pool prices tighter to market. Chad said that's something the community could vote on via a future ADR.

5. Huginn: Multi-Model AI and 102 MRs in 3.17

Release 3.17 shipped with 102 merged MRs, a new record. Huginn (THORChain's AI security agent) accounted for 34 of those, but many were batched, with 3-4 MRs containing 9 GitLab issues each. The real count of resolved issues is likely 60-70+.

Huginn only looks at P0 and P1 priority issues. Most fixes are smaller cleanup items, but it occasionally finds significant catches, like a transaction prioritization bug where churns weren't being prioritized over swaps in the mempool.

"We're entering a post-prompt world of AI where it's just autonomously finding things and fixing them. I am the limiting factor on Huginn."

Chad is adding multi-model support: Claude, Codex, and Gemini will review the same problem and reach consensus on whether a bug is real or a hallucination. This "tri-brain" approach also helps distribute usage across providers after Anthropic cut subscription quotas.

The second Huginn project is real-time monitoring: a daemon that watches THORNode logs, events, and metrics, surfaces anomalies to a Discord channel, and then Huginn triages them using all three models.

6. AI's Accelerating Impact

Chad went deep on Anthropic's Mythos, which dropped this week. The model broke out of its testing sandbox and emailed a researcher who was eating a sandwich in a park. It found a 27-year-old zero-day in OpenBSD. Chad compared it to Stuxnet, the virus that targeted Iran's Natanz nuclear facility, noting that AI now makes that level of offensive capability accessible far more broadly.

He highlighted that Anthropic just surpassed OpenAI in revenue for the first time, and that OpenAI's competing model (codenamed Spud) will push both companies to release these capabilities. Chad's hope: eventually send THORNode's codebase (or the Frost implementation) to Anthropic for a Mythos security audit.

On the broader picture, Chad sees AI as a civilization-altering technology on par with written language, the computer, and the internet, noting that every biologist in the world now uses AlphaFold and that nearly every future drug will leverage AI-folded proteins.

"Engineers are peer-reviewed by reality."

Source: Raynalytics

7. ADR23 and Reserve Burn

The reserve burn (ADR23) to lower $RUNE max supply is either already merged or shipping in the next release. Once the burn reduces the reserve to ~9 million $RUNE, the over-solvency payout mechanism can be flipped on. This means excess reserve income will flow back to the network. The system income to POL merge is confirmed for 3.18.

8. BTC Las Vegas Meetup and Community Updates

The THORChain meetup during Bitcoin Las Vegas is set for April 27 at 7 PM. Kenton is finalizing a venue. RSVPs plus guests are at ~40-50 people, possibly more. @Randy_Bechtold will be there for BD, and the team plans to pull people in from the conference floor.

Kenton also mentioned two community merch stores are live, one run by @familiarcow and another from the Rujira community, with links on the new website.

The new THORChain website is hoping to go live by next Friday.

Denny plugged an upcoming Saturday interview with Boone (April 11) and teased a future Space with "the agorist, cypherpunk, disintermediator." Chad also confirmed he'll appear on Joel's (@TheDesertLynx) show on Friday at 3 PM Eastern.

As @WithTheCoke put it in the chat: "THORChain is so hot right now."

Denny wrapped with a message: if you're interested in becoming a node operator offering permissionless Monero swaps, reach out to @therunetard on X.

What to Watch

• $XMR on stagenet/chaosnet in 2-4 weeks, mainnet in 1-2 months
• $ZEC mainnet targeted by end of April
• $TAO development running in parallel with $XMR
• Release 3.18 bringing ADR24, POL system income, and new chain clients
• Rapid swaps climbing toward the threshold for increasing confirmations from 2 to 3
• Huginn multi-model merge landing soon
• BTC Las Vegas meetup on April 27, venue TBD
• New THORChain website targeting launch by next Friday

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