A single dropped Ethereum block left THORChain paying out 10 ETH it never received — and by Saturday, swaps on 10 chains were frozen. If you had a cross-chain swap lined up on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana or Tron, it is stuck until THORChain's node operators switch each chain back on, one at a time.
Key points:
- One Ethereum block vanished in a reorg, THORChain had already credited the 10 ETH in it, and a failed swap got refunded twice over.
- Swaps stopped on 10 chains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Tron, while Avalanche and Base kept trading.
- The user handed the extra 10 ETH back, the vaults are whole again, and node operators now pick when each chain comes back.
It started at 11:34 UTC on Saturday. Ethereum swapped out one recent block for a competing block, and a 10 ETH deposit sitting in the dropped block never landed on the chain that counts. THORChain had already seen that deposit and credited its vault, so when the swap tied to it missed its price limit, the system sent a refund for money the vault never held. The sender's real deposit got refunded too, which left the vault 10 ETH short and tripped an automatic pause.
Node operators then paused swaps on 10 networks, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Tron. Avalanche and Base kept trading, and THORChain says nodes will switch each chain back on only when they judge it safe. That chain-by-chain restart is what traders should watch, because there is no single switch that brings everything back at once.
My own take is blunt: a 10 ETH mix-up should not be able to freeze 10 chains, and that weak spot matters more than the hacker angle. Until THORChain fixes how it handles a dropped block, every reorg is a live risk.
Read also: FBI Blames North Korea for $6.3B Binance Hack — Can DeFi Block the Wallets?
When do the swaps come back?
The good news is small but real. The user sent the extra 10 ETH back, so the vaults are whole again, and THORChain says its developers are working on a fix. The bad news is that the flaw is now out in the open. THORChain itself warns that, with each reorg on another chain, a bad actor could reuse the same trade number and get paid from the vaults again.
The freeze also slowed the North Korean hackers behind the $6.3 billion Binance theft, by accident more than by plan. Chainalysis says the pause is stopping all users, including the hackers, from swapping through most of THORChain's bridges until the service comes back. That landed just as the FBI pressed THORChain node operators to block wallets tied to the theft, a request the protocol has pushed back on, since it cannot freeze one user without shutting a whole chain down.
Read also: Binance Users Pull $3.64B After Withdrawals Reopen — Is the Rush Over?
— BitByLine News Desk
This post is just news, not money advice. BitByLine will not tell you to buy or sell a coin, and if you do anything with your own cash, that call and that risk are both yours, so look into it yourself first. Read our full Disclaimer.
Sources: Cointelegraph, Blockonomi
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