ThorChain Overhauls Liquidity Model with Stable Reserve and POL

THORChain has released its v3.20 protocol upgrade, which introduces several significant changes to the platform's liquidity model and infrastructure.

The Stable Reserve is a new feature that allows eligible stablecoin swaps to execute directly against protocol-owned stablecoin inventory, eliminating liquidity fees and slippage when sufficient inventory exists. This effectively creates a faster lane for stablecoin trades while preserving fallback to standard pools.

Protocol-Owned Liquidity (POL), on the other hand, can redirect a portion of THORChain's System Income into a dedicated reserve, which is then deployed as RUNE liquidity into selected pools. Two Mimirs now control how much System Income flows into POL and which pools are eligible to receive RUNE liquidity.

The upgrade also advances Monero and Zcash integrations, prepares BNB, Base, and Solana trading to resume, expands ERC-20 Memoless Swaps, and strengthens node and vault security. Fixes for FROST key generation, signing, recovery, and solvency reporting have been implemented for Monero, while Zcash support has advanced through compatibility with its NU6.3 Ironwood upgrade.