At a glance

  • The USDT contract on Tron logged blacklist events for four THORChain vault addresses at 12:09:42 UTC on 9 Oct and removal events for the same four between 15:30:33 and 15:30:39 UTC, according to our read of the chain.
  • THORChain’s technical co-founder said the freeze was unprecedented, and Crypto Briefing reported that THORChain paused Tron swaps and that about 1.45 million USDT was affected; we did not independently confirm that amount.

Tether’s USDT contract on Tron includes a blacklist function, which lets the issuer stop a given address from moving the token. We read the contract’s event log through the TronGrid API. It shows 35 addresses added to the blacklist within about six seconds from 12:09:39 UTC, among them the four vault addresses (example transaction).

The four addresses match entries in THORNode’s list of THORChain’s Asgard vaults, which we read through a public gateway. Removal events for the four were logged at 15:30:33, 15:30:36 and 15:30:39 UTC (example transaction). We found no removal event for the other 31 addresses in the 12:09 batch as of about 19:55 UTC. Crypto Briefing counts 19 other addresses still blacklisted; we did not reconcile the two figures.

Chad Barraford, who describes himself on X as THORChain’s technical co-founder, posted at 13:59 UTC: “It appears that USDT has chosen to blacklist THORChain vaults of USDT on the TRON blockchain. This is unprecedented in our industry and raises questions for all DeFi protocols about the safety of this asset.” At 15:35 UTC he wrote that Tether appeared to have unfrozen the addresses and that trading would resume soon.

Crypto Briefing reported that THORChain paused its Tron swaps and liquidity-provider operations during the freeze, that the team had no prior warning, and that about 1.45 million USDT was frozen. We found no public statement from Tether’s or THORChain’s official X accounts about the freeze or its reversal as of 19:55 UTC.

Background

Tether has frozen USDT before, usually at addresses tied to crime or sanctions. CryptoWatchDesk reported on 7 Oct on Conduit’s lawsuit over a $2.76 million USDT freeze, which alleges the freeze had no legal basis; Tether had not publicly responded when we reported it. THORChain also featured in our Bitget hack fund trail through THORChain post-mortem, which covers swaps of stolen funds through the protocol.

Nothing we found connects those events to today’s blacklist, and Tether has not given a reason.

What it changes for users

Anyone supplying USDT to a protocol that holds it in a few addresses takes the issuer’s blacklist decisions as a risk alongside smart-contract risk; what a dollar stablecoin is explains who can freeze what.

What to watch: any statement from Tether or THORChain, and whether the remaining blacklisted addresses are released.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice.