THORchain Halts Trading after Suspected $10 Million Exploit

Decentralised liquidity protocol has paused all trading operations after ZachXBT, a blockchain investigator, exposed a suspected exploit of more than $10 million (roughly Rs. 95.8 crore). In a Telegram announcement on Friday, Thorchain stated that trading would be halted for about 12 hours and 42 minutes, until block 26191149. The halt came after the investigator flagged that the protocol had likely been exposed across Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Base. The wallet labelled as the ThorChain exploiter had $10.8 million (roughly Rs. 103 crore) in assets and was sending small transactions in the 30 minutes before 10:11 am UTC, Arkham said.

Blockchain Firms Flag Suspicious Activity Across Multiple Networks

A lot of Decentralised Finance (DeFi) protocols have fallen prey to such exploits, which is why this incident raises the security concerns of such protocols. Hackers have managed to steal over $634 million (roughly Rs. 6,077 crore) in April, which marks the highest monthly sum since the $1.46 billion (roughly Rs. 13,994 crore) in February 2025, when hackers got hold of the Bybit exchange and managed to steal $1.4 billion (roughly Rs. 13,419 crore), as per the data from DefiLlama.

While Thorchain is yet to make a public announcement, several other blockchain analytics firms have flagged the potential exploit, which includes Cyvers, Peckshield and Lookonchain. Tokenholders swiftly sold following the suspected exploit, as the price of the Thorchain (RUNE) token fell 13 percent in the 24 hours leading up to 10:20 a.m. UTC, to change hands above $0.50, Coingecko data shows. 

Following the Kelp DAO exploit of $293 million (roughly Rs. 2,805 crore), DeFi protocols have come together in an attempt to restore the backing of Restaked Ether (rsETH), showcasing the need to tackle such crypto scams and hacks. The Decentralised platform Aave has called this effort “DeFI United”. Crypto protocols involved also include Mantle, EtherFi Foundation, Golem Foundation, Lido DAO, Ethena, LayerZero, Ink Foundation, and Tyrdo. 

Earlier in April, as per a post on X by another blockchain analyst, EmberCN, the attackers behind the $293 million (roughly Rs. 2,805 crore) Kelp DAO exploit managed to launder 75,700 Ether (ETH) across Thorchain, generating about $910,000 (roughly Rs. 8.7 crore) in revenue for the protocol. Similarly, the majority of the $1.4 billion (roughly Rs. 13,419 crore) stolen during the Bybit attack was also laundered through Thorchain by the attackers, who swapped the tokens from Ether to Bitcoin, as per a post on X by Bybit co-founder and CEO Ben Zhou.