THORChain swaps remained paused on 12 of the 13 external chains listed by its status API on Saturday. Chainalysis attributed the halt to an Ethereum reorganization that caused a duplicate refund. Outbound signing is enabled on most affected chains, so payments can proceed even while new swaps stay blocked.
THORChain swaps remained paused on 12 of the 13 external chains listed by its chain-status API early Saturday afternoon ET. Zcash was the only listed chain without a trading pause, so users could not exchange assets through most of the cross-chain network.
Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis attributed the interruption to an Ethereum reorganization that caused a duplicate refund. According to Chainalysis, THORChain had incorrectly issued "a double refund to someone who had deposited 10 ETH," which triggered an emergency pause.
Trading and payments have separate pause controls
A stopped market does not necessarily mean stopped payments. THORChain's network settings showed outbound signing enabled on most affected chains, including Bitcoin and Ethereum. Its documentation distinguishes a trading halt, which stops swaps but permits outbound processing, from a signing halt, which leaves outbound payments queued.
The status API showed trading paused on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Avalanche, Base, Bitcoin Cash, BNB Chain, Dogecoin, Cosmos Hub, Litecoin, Solana, Tron and XRP Ledger. The global trading-pause setting was off, and individual chain restrictions were blocking those routes.
The broader disruption had lasted more than four hours. The THOR InfoBot alerts account reported trading halted across 10 chains at 9:06 a.m. ET on Oct. 31, and most of those routes were still paused in the early-afternoon API snapshot, although Zcash trading had resumed.
What the pause means for pending transfers
THORChain's halt-management documentation warns users not to send funds to a halted route. Under a trading-only halt, incoming transactions continue to be observed, but swaps are not processed and refunds are issued instead. The documentation says funds sent during a halt generally are not lost, but can be significantly delayed.
Signing restrictions remained active for Cosmos Hub and Solana in the network-settings snapshot. Lifting a trading restriction alone would therefore not clear payments on those chains.
Ethereum's signing restriction, by contrast, had been lifted at 1:28 p.m. ET, while its trading pause remained active.
Source: The Defiant
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