Overview
- Late September 2026, attackers stole about $387.5 million from exchange Bitget and portions of the proceeds were routed through THORChain, prompting Bitget to ask the protocol to refuse service to attacker addresses.
- THORChain declined to block the addresses and the project retired selective address blacklisting in February 2025, framing that choice as a neutrality policy against singling out wallets.
- Barraford told interviewers on October 5–6 that the protocol has tools such as MakePause, which can pause a chain for roughly 720 blocks (about an hour), but reaching the two‑thirds validator votes needed for permanent changes typically takes days and can take up to two weeks.
- Critics say THORChain’s threshold signature scheme pools signing authority over vaults and creates a different custody and censorship risk profile than Bitcoin or Ethereum, making the protocol more exposed to questions about who can stop transactions.
- The debate highlights a tradeoff for users and exchanges between faster, centralized controls that can block laundering and THORChain’s current design that favors broad validator consensus; past incidents like ThorFi and ShapeShift show quicker centralized responses can limit laundering but require different governance choices.