On August 25, 2026, THORChain shipped version 3.20 and, for the first time, real Monero and real Zcash could be swapped against Bitcoin, Ethereum and stablecoins on a decentralised protocol with no wrapped tokens, no account and no custodian in the middle. Monero rallied roughly 50% over the month, touching $544 on August 31, and the launch was widely framed as the answer to two years of exchange delistings.
The announcement coverage told you that it exists. It did not tell you what it is actually like to use, or whether you should. This post covers the parts the press releases skipped: what changed at the protocol level, what a BTC to XMR swap costs you in slippage and waiting time on a pool that is still being filled, where the Zcash side falls short on privacy, and a plain decision rule for when THORChain is the right tool versus a fixed-rate instant swap.
Access is through the official interface at swap.thorchain.org or wallets that integrate THORChain routing. Confirm that the interface you are using lists XMR before you send anything; not every THORChain frontend has added the new chains yet.
Compare this to a fixed-rate instant swap, where step 3 is a locked number, step 5 is the only wait, and there is no step 6.
THORChain chose a phased rollout and said so plainly: liquidity for the XMR and ZEC pools would be thin at the start, with the treasury acting as the primary liquidity provider from a seed of roughly $10,000. Protocol-Owned Liquidity has been adding depth since, but two weeks in, the pool is nowhere near deep enough for the amounts people actually move into Monero. A swap that represents a few percent of pool depth pays a few percent in price impact. On a small pool, that threshold is reached at a few hundred dollars, not a few thousand.
The practical rule: check the live pool depth in the interface before you quote. If your swap is more than about 1% of the XMR pool, expect visible slippage. If it is more than 5%, use a different route or split the order with streaming swaps, which spread the trade over many blocks and still cannot beat the pool's recovery rate.
Two chains have to confirm, and Monero's 10-confirmation lock on the receiving side alone is about 20 minutes. Bitcoin congestion adds on top. Half an hour is a normal experience, an hour is not unusual. Instant swap services face the same Monero confirmation rule for outbound funds, but they do not add a second protocol hop, and they report a 5 to 30 minute window for the same pair.
THORChain is an automated market maker. The quote is an estimate; the amount you receive is decided by pool state when your deposit lands. Slippage limits stop catastrophic outcomes by refunding, but a refund is not a free retry: you have paid Bitcoin fees and an outbound fee and are back where you started, 30 minutes later, with a different price.
Protocol fees are small, in the range of 0.05% to 0.15%, plus the outbound network fee on the Monero side. The fee line is rarely the problem. Price impact on a shallow pool is. A 0.5% instant-swap margin on a fixed quote is frequently cheaper in total than a 0.1% protocol fee plus 3% slippage.
ZEC shipped in the same release, and the headline "native Zcash swaps" is true. What it does not say is that the integration works with transparent t-addresses. Shielded support, whether legacy z-addresses or unified u-addresses, has not been announced for 3.20. Validating a shielded output from an external protocol needs either trust assumptions or a zero-knowledge verification layer that does not exist in THORChain today.
For a privacy user that matters. A BTC to ZEC swap on THORChain lands in a transparent address, visible on the Zcash chain like any Bitcoin transaction. You then shield it yourself inside Zashi or Zodl, which is one more transaction and one more link in the graph. If your goal is shielded ZEC from the start, our THORChain Zcash guide walks through the address types, and the BTC to ZEC pair page covers the instant-swap route.
| Factor | THORChain 3.20 | Fixed-rate instant swap |
|---|---|---|
| Rate | Floating, decided at settlement | Locked when you create the order |
| Slippage | Depends on pool depth; high on XMR/ZEC while pools fill | None; margin is built into the quote (~0.5%) |
| Time, BTC → XMR | 20–60 min (two chains + 10 XMR confirmations) | 5–30 min |
| Setup | Compatible wallet or interface, memo handling | Paste an address, send coins |
| Counterparty | None; validator-controlled vaults | The swap operator for the minutes the order is open |
| Large amounts | Impractical until pools deepen | Handled via aggregated liquidity |
| Source coins | BTC, ETH, stablecoins, SOL, others via RUNE | BTC, ETH, LTC, SOL, USDT (TRC20/ERC20), ZEC and more, direct to XMR |
| Shielded ZEC | Transparent addresses only | Pays to the address your wallet gives |
| KYC | None | None |
Both routes are non-custodial in the sense that matters: the XMR ends up in your own wallet and nobody asked who you are. The difference is who, if anyone, holds the funds for the few minutes in between, and whether the number you were quoted is the number you get. Our Monero hub lists every no-KYC route we track, including atomic swaps for people who want neither an operator nor a pool.
Version 3.20, released on August 25, 2026, added native XMR and ZEC to THORChain's mainnet. You can now swap real Monero or Zcash against BTC, ETH and stablecoins with no wrapped tokens, no account and no custodian. The same release introduced Protocol-Owned Liquidity, a Stable Reserve for fee-free stablecoin swaps, and renewed support for Solana, Base and BNB Chain.
Plan for 20 to 60 minutes. Your Bitcoin deposit needs to confirm first, THORChain then routes BTC to RUNE to XMR internally, and Monero requires 10 confirmations (roughly 20 minutes) before the received XMR is spendable in your wallet. Bitcoin congestion is the biggest variable.
THORChain launched XMR with a deliberately phased rollout and a small treasury-seeded pool. On a thin pool, even a mid-size swap moves the price against you, so the quote you receive can sit several percent below the market rate. Protocol-Owned Liquidity is designed to deepen the pool over time, but as of September 2026 the depth still favours small swaps. Always compare the quote to spot before confirming.
THORChain's Zcash integration works with transparent (t-) addresses. Shielded-address support has not been announced as part of 3.20. If you want shielded ZEC, receive to a transparent address and shield inside your wallet, or use an instant swap that pays out to the address type your wallet gives you.
No. THORChain quotes a rate at the moment you submit, but the actual amount received depends on pool conditions when your deposit confirms. Slippage limits protect you from extreme moves by refunding the swap, minus fees. An instant swap service with a fixed quote locks the amount you will receive when you create the order.
When you want a protocol with no operator at all, you already run a THORChain-compatible wallet, your amount is small relative to the pool, and you are happy to wait for confirmations and accept a floating rate. For larger amounts, for a guaranteed receive amount, or when you are starting from a coin THORChain does not route natively, an instant no-KYC swap is faster and usually cheaper once slippage is counted.
The Monero integration uses a dedicated vault signed by the full active validator set with FROST threshold signatures, and it spent months on stagenet before launch. THORChain itself has a history of large exploits and any new chain client is new code. Start with a small amount, use the official swap interface rather than constructing memos yourself, and never send more than the pool can absorb.
BTC, ETH, LTC, SOL, USDT → XMR · Locked rate · No account · 5–30 min
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