THORChain Activates Zcash Pool, Swaps Still Pending

THORChain activated a Zcash liquidity pool on October 2 after completing a network node rotation, bringing ZEC onto the protocol while leaving native swaps unavailable. The protocol said trading is the next step but gave no start time or pool-depth figure, and warned that liquidity is shallow during the initial phase. The activation followed a churn in which all active nodes began monitoring the Zcash blockchain. THORChain’s network explorer listed ZEC as operating normally among the chains tracked by the network. The pool’s launch and the start of user-facing swaps are separate stages: the pool is live, but users cannot yet make native ZEC swaps through it. The integration was preceded by months of technical work. THORChain’s March development changes added Zcash-specific handling for unspent transaction outputs, or UTXOs, and remote procedure calls, as well as support for ZEC pricing through its oracle. Later changes addressed fee calculations and signing consistency between nodes. A September fix tied transaction expiry to an agreed ZEC block height, intended to prevent nodes using different local chain tips from producing inconsistent signing data.