THORChain's gross swap fees are climbing again, but they remain 84% below the levels recorded in September — a month whose activity was heavily driven by funds tied to the Bitget exploit.

The gap matters because September was not a normal month for the cross-chain liquidity protocol. Much of its activity came from funds linked to the exploit, and THORChain must now demonstrate what its business looks like without that one-off windfall.

The Numbers Behind the Spike and the Slide

September's system income reached $3.01 million, a sharp rise from $615,000 in August. Swap volume followed the same path, hitting $2.40 billion in September, up from $613 million the month before.

Most of that jump was concentrated in a five-day window. Between September 25 and 29, flows connected to the Bitget exploit drove the activity. Those exploit-related flows accounted for approximately 57-63% of September's total volume and income — roughly $1.37 billion in swap volume and about $1.9 million in income during the five-day period.

As of mid-October, gross swap fees have fallen to 84% below September's levels, though they are recovering modestly and hovering in the mid-to-high six figures. DefiLlama, an on-chain analytics platform that tracks fees across decentralized protocols, puts recent 30-day fees at approximately $635K. That figure sits close to August's $615,000 in system income. The comparison is loose, since the two metrics are calculated differently, but it points to the same conclusion: once the exploit-related flows disappeared, THORChain looks much like its pre-surge self.

No significant spikes or exploits were reported in October.

How THORChain Fits In

THORChain is a decentralized liquidity protocol built for swapping assets across different blockchains. It allows users to move value from one chain to another without routing through a centralized exchange. Because the venue is permissionless, it works for everyone — including people moving the proceeds of an exploit. No party can block specific users or reverse transfers at the protocol level, so funds from security incidents move through the same pools as any other volume. The protocol earns fees on that volume, which creates an uncomfortable dynamic: one of its best recent was powered in large part by someone else's bad week.

Not everything in September came down to the exploit, however. Ecosystem participation also grew during the month. Active wallets rose to 25,000, and the validator set expanded to 103 nodes — the operators who process cross-chain swaps and receive the largest share of protocol income. Protocol-Owned Liquidity, or POL, had collected nearly 946,000 RUNE in deposits by September. POL is liquidity the protocol holds itself rather than borrowing from outside providers, and RUNE is THORChain's native token.

A New Revenue Split

THORChain has also changed how it distributes system income. Under the revised split:

• 59% to nodes
• 20% to Protocol-Owned Liquidity
• 10% to TCY
• 5% to the Developer Fund
• 5% to the Marketing Fund
• 1% to RUNE burn

The RUNE burn share drops from 5% to 1%, with that money shifted toward other priorities. Burns permanently remove tokens from circulation, so the smaller allocation means fewer RUNE leave supply. The most significant change is the 20% now allocated to Protocol-Owned Liquidity.

What This Means

For anyone tracking THORChain as a business, the key task is separating signal from noise. September's $3.01 million in system income makes for a striking headline, but approximately 57-63% of the month's volume and income came from a single, nonrecurring event. Strip that out, and the more useful benchmark is the roughly $635K in 30-day fees reported by DefiLlama.

Directing 20% of income into POL could give THORChain deeper liquidity that it controls outright. The trade-off is a smaller burn, with the RUNE burn share falling from 5% to 1%.

The figures to watch are clear: whether monthly fees can climb meaningfully above the roughly $635K range without another one-off event, whether active wallets hold near 25,000 now that the surge has passed, and how quickly POL grows beyond its nearly 946,000 RUNE in deposits.

Source: CryptoBriefing