Network Halts

Warning

If the network is halted, do not send funds. The easiest check to do is if halted = true on the inbound addresses endpoint.

Info

In most cases funds won't be lost if they are sent when halted, but they may be significantly delayed.

Danger

In the worse case if THORChain suffers a consensus halt the inbound_addresses endpoint will freeze with halted = false but the network is actually hard-halted. In this case running a fullnode is beneficial, because the last block will become stale after 6 seconds and interfaces can detect this.

Interfaces that provide LP management can provide more feedback to the user what specifically is paused.

There are levels of granularity the network has to control itself and chains in the event of issues. Interfaces need to monitor these settings and apply appropriate controls in their interfaces, inform users and prevent unsupported actions.

All activity is controlled within Mimir and needs to be observed by interfaces and acted upon. Also, see a description of Constants and Mimir.

Halt flags are Boolean. For clarity 0 = false, no issues and > 0 = true (usually 1), halt in effect.

Halt/ Pause Management

Each chain has granular control allowing each chain to be halted or resumed on a specific chain as required. Network-level halting is also possible.

  1. Specific Chain Signing Halt - Allows inbound transactions but stops the signing of outbound transactions. Outbound transactions are queued. This is the least impactful halt.
    1. Mimir setting is HALTSIGNING[Chain], e.g. HALTSIGNINGETH
  2. Specific Chain Liquidity Provider Pause - addition and withdrawal of liquidity are suspended but swaps and other transactions are processed.
    1. Mimir setting is PAUSELP[Chain], e,g, PAUSELPBCH for BCH
  3. Specific Chain Trading Halt - Transactions on external chains are observed but not processed, only refunds are given. THORNode's Bifrost is running, nodes are synced to the tip therefore trading resumption can happen very quickly.
    1. Mimir setting is HALT[Chain]TRADING, e,g, HALTBCHTRADING for BCH
  4. Specific Chain Halt - Serious halt where transitions on that chain are no longer observed and THORNodes will not be synced to the chain tip, usually their Bifrost offline. Resumption will require a majority of nodes syncing to the tip before trading can commence.
    1. Mimir setting is HALT[Chain]CHAIN, e,g, HALTBCHCHAIN for BCH.

Warning

Chain specific halts do occur and need to be monitored and reacted to when they occur. Users should not be able to send transactions via an interface when a halt is in effect.

Network Level Halts

  • Network Pause LP PAUSELP = 1 Addition and withdrawal of liquidity are suspended for all pools but swaps and other transactions are processed.
  • Network Pause Lending PAUSELOANS = 1 Opening and closing of loans is paused for all loans.
  • Network Trading Halt HALTTRADING = 1 Will stop all trading for every connected chain. The THORChain blockchain will continue and native RUNE transactions will be processed.

There is no Network level chain halt setting as the THORChain Blockchain continually needs to produce blocks.

A chain halt is possible in which case Mimir or Midgard will not return data. This can happen if the chain suffers consensus failure or more than 1/3 of nodes are switched off. If this occurs the Dev Discord Server #interface-alerts will issue alerts.

Warning

While very rare, a network level halt is possible and should be monitored for.

Synth Management

Synths minting and redeeming can be enabled and disabled using flags. There is also a Synth mint limit. The setting are:

  • MINTSYNTHS - controls whether synths can be minted (swapping from L1 to synth)
  • BURNSYNTHS controls whether synths can be burned (swapping from synth to L1)
  • MAXSYNTHPERPOOLDEPTH - controls the synth depth limit for each pool, expressed in basis points of the total pool depth (asset + RUNE). For example: 5000 basis points equals 50% of the total pool. If the pool contains 100 BTC and 100 BTC worth of RUNE, a 50% MAXSYNTHPERPOOLDEPTH allows 100 BTC of synthetic assets to be minted.

Lending Management

Lending Pause PAUSELOANS = 1 - Opening and closing of loans are suspended

Trade Accounts

Trade Accounts Pause TradeAccountsEnabled = 1 - Adding to and withdrawing from the Trade Account is enabled.

See also Constants and Mimir.