As seen on the grapevine.
Been hearing these rumors and whispers of XMR being integrated into ThorChain for about a week now and figured it was worth commenting on. It's very difficult to get a privacy coin onto a DEX and I feel like the reasons for are a bit obvious at a cursory glance. How can a trustless solution be created when the data on chain doesn't identify the sender, receiver, or even amount of money transferred? To be honest I still have no idea how Zero Knowledge Proofs work so to me it's all math ninja magic happening in the background.
Assuming that this integration does actually happen I've blogged about it several times that adding a privacy coin into a DEX without employing a centralized middle man is a huge deal difficult to exaggerate. Normally when a coin is added that's just one random option traders have to choose from. But when it's the first privacy coin now everyone on the network has access to that privacy. Trading Bitcoin into XMR back into Bitcoin creates a new address of unknown origin through the magic of the privacy protocol. That's a pretty powerful thing in a world that's being tracked and surveilled by the establishment 24/7 under the guise of "security" and "you should have nothing to hide" false rhetoric propaganda. Privacy is a basic human right.
But not everyone is happy with this.
Here's the top comment from a Reddit post I found on the issue:
They didn't build shit. They stole Serais code and vibe-coded it into Thorchain. The reason why Serai isn't live yet, is because the devs want to make sure it is actually safe to use. The Thorchain devs do not care if you lose all of your money, so they are rushing to launch before Serai can. In the past they have lost over $200M user funds through similar recklessness.
If you put any funds into this, you should expect to lose them.
I am saying this as someone who was been a big fan of Thorchain in the past, at one point I even had most of my networth in there. While I got out in time, others were not so lucky.
Fool me once, fool me twice, you know how it goes.
Hm yes okay clearly this guy lost money on thorchain and then tried to pretend like he didn't.
I've lost money there as well and was really annoyed by it... not really at the network but at myself for ignoring the many warning signs I was given. In any case I'm reading that when this solution goes live there won't even be user liquidity pools so the chance of losing money on that seems a bit slim. Apparently it will be funded by the treasury at first?
It's also very telling for someone in the open source community make the claim that the code was "stolen" when it's clearly open source and operating under a very specific license that allows exactly what's happening. Personally I think the very concept of intellectual property is flawed and will no longer exist if crypto takes over. The true value of open source and the financial system we are trying to build here is the community itself. Doesn't matter if you clone Bitcoin: that clone is worth zero if the community is worth zero. Open source IP is an oxymoron.
For me personally the XMR chart is the most solid looking chart in the entire industry (including Bitcoin). Not because it's made huge gains but because the stability of the coin is unmatched. Monero is a token that's been under attack and delisted across numerous exchanges for a decade now. The story I tell myself is that when this thing actually gets access to a deep liquidity pool that's secure and can't be delisted... well I'd imagine it's going straight to the moon considering the adversity that it's already overcome.
What about Zcash?
I would be remiss if I didn't mention another privacy option as well that other dexes are also attempting to integrate. There are a lot more degens that are into zcash because of that massive pump back in November 2025. Of course just looking at the chart we can see that this thing is completely unstable. Who knows what could happen here. Monero is perhaps boring in comparison but also a lot safer. I also bought some XMR for the first time when it crashed to $100 so I'm obviously not complaining about being up x4 two years later in the middle of a perceived bear market.
How risky is it really though?
It's worth reiterating that swapping funds through a dex is exponentially safer than parking liquidity there. Say it takes 5 minutes to make the trade; your money is at risk for a guaranteed maximum of 5 minutes (and you can make smaller trades in higher volume to even further reduce this risk). Meanwhile parking tokens in an LP is at risk 24 hours a day and is the foundation and attack vector of pretty much all defi honeypots. Basically don't farm yield on a dex unless you're 100% sure it's the right move for you.
Conclusion
Even though the Trump administration promised to remove all the unjust regulations on our industry... did they really? If so why are regular centralized exchanges still booting off users with geo-blocking and requiring KY? At the end of the day the traditional financial sector will always be one riddled with rules and regulations that arguably should not exist and consistently violate user privacy.
DEXes are the solve to this issue but unfortunately it's been slow going. What good is the ability to trade one asset for another if every asset in the network just lost 90%+ of its value during the bear market? What are these listings actually bringing to the table? How big of a hurdle is it to provide a permissionless trade directly to fiat paper currency or (more likely) buying goods and services directly with the token? At least with privacy token listings the utility is obvious and necessary to proceed further down this path of decentralization, freedom, and the right to not be spied on by default.