- OKX CEO Star Xu heavily criticized THORChain’s decentralized claim, saying its model doesn’t align with that design.
- Public backlash hit the cross-chain liquidity protocol after its core team refused to block transactions linked to the $387.5 million Bitget hack.
THORChain (RUNE) is in hot water with the crypto community after its core team refused to play ball with calls to reject transactions linked to the recent $387.5 million Bitget hack. The people behind it stood their ground, arguing that doing so would run counter to the network’s decentralized and permissionless nature. However, critics pushed back, saying those factors should not serve as tools for illicit activity or for bad actors to evade accountability.
During the weekend, OKX CEO Star Xu questioned whether THORChain really adheres to a decentralized model. This came in response to the core team’s refusal to accommodate Bitget CEO Gracy Chen’s request to deny service to the addresses involved in the unified exchange’s (UEX) hacking incident last Thursday evening.
OKX CEO Star Xu Criticizes THORChain’s Decentralization Claim
THORChain likened its chain to Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), which lack central authority and protocol-level censorship mechanisms, to justify its decision. However, Star highlighted that TSS (Threshold Signature Scheme) and the validator model don’t represent “true decentralization.”
Star explained that THORChain’s selected validators set collectively control the underlying assets in the TSS vaults. Validators can only move funds once the chain meets its signing threshold.
Additionally, the OKX CEO pointed out that the feature significantly differentiates THORChain from the base-layer consensus models of Bitcoin and Ethereum from a custody perspective. He emphasized that the model functions as an intermediary between users and the native chains.
“TSS distributes control among multiple parties, but distributing an intermediary does not eliminate the intermediary,” said Star.
Community Feedback on the Latest THORChain Issue
Many agreed with Star’s position, with the pseudonymous Chinese Crypto researcher BITWU.ETH expounding on the subject. The crypto personality underscored that simply distributing the middleman does not mean the middleman doesn’t exist. He reiterated that THORChain should not hide behind the veil of decentralization to dodge responsibility for returning stolen funds.
Meanwhile, an official from Dashpay, a decentralized social payment application that uses THORChain for cross-chain swaps, insisted that THORChain is not centralized and has no censorship tools. He told Star, “Stop coping because your failed centralized model can’t protect users.”
Star answered, reminding the Dashpay official that THORChain itself froze network operations for 13 hours when it suffered an exploit in May.
“A network that can stop when its own funds are at risk, but refuses to do so when someone else’s funds are at risk, is not ‘like Bitcoin,” Star added. “Bitcoin cannot be stopped. THORChain can—it simply chooses when to do so.”
