THORChain has been called a money laundering protocol — a label no decentralized finance (DeFi) project wants unless it’s prepared to have regulators breathing down its neck.
Its supporters have fended off the criticism by championing decentralization, while its critics point to recent activities that showed some of the protocol’s centralized tendencies.
After exploiting Bybit for $1.4 billion, the North Korean state-backed hackers behind the attack, known as the Lazarus Group, flocked to THORChain, making it their top choice to convert stolen funds from Ether (ETH) to Bitcoin (BTC). Lazarus finished converting its Ether within just 10 days of the hack.
The controversy has triggered internal conflict, governance cracks and developer resignations, exposing a deeper issue and question: Can DeFi remain neutral when criminals exploit it at scale?
THORChain is not a mixer
THORChain is a decentralized swap protocol, so