GoPlus Challenges THORChain's Decentralization Claims Amid $80 Million XRP Heist

GoPlus Security has challenged THORChain's claims of being decentralized after the cross-chain swap network failed to use its emergency controls to block stolen funds tied to North Korean hacking groups.

The dispute comes as investigators track over $80 million in XRP stolen from crypto exchange Bitget, which has already begun moving across the blockchain. This timing highlights a fundamental tension in the crypto industry: native assets like XRP cannot be frozen at the protocol level, while protocols like THORChain maintain emergency controls that could be deployed against illicit flows.

GoPlus argued that THORChain's threshold-signature vaults and emergency governance mechanisms give node operators powers that differ from Bitcoin and Ethereum's base-layer consensus. They pointed to THORChain's own documentation, which describes procedures for issuing a pause command when funds face a critical threat.