What is a THORChain vault?

A THORChain vault is an address on a connected chain that holds real coins, such as Bitcoin or Ether, and that THORChain’s nodes control together. Its key is split among the nodes, so no single node can move the coins alone.

Also called Asgard vault or THORChain vault.

How the nodes control it

A vault is controlled with threshold signatures (TSS), so no single party has complete access to its coins. No complete private key exists in one place, and a transaction needs a supermajority of the nodes to sign it.

Each vault is split into shards, and each shard is controlled by a subset of the validators.

Asgard vaults and churn

The active vault is typically an Asgard vault, shared among the current validator set. Churn cycles change that set automatically.

After each churn, funds move from the retiring vault to a newly created vault, and the newest vault immediately receives new deposits.

A retiring vault gets no new transactions but keeps its funds until they are migrated. Once its funds are drained, it is marked inactive, and an inactive vault is no longer used for signing.

In Redacted

Redacted’s bunker mode page says that THORChain’s vaults sign for Bitcoin and Ethereum, so THORChain moves together with those chains when they change how they sign.

Bunker mode →

Related terms

Inbound addressAn inbound address is the address on a connected chain where you send coins to THORChain, and it belongs to the active vault that THORChain’s nodes control together. It changes when the vaults change, so read the current one right before you send.THORChainTHORChain is a network that swaps native coins across chains, such as Bitcoin for Ether, with no bridges and no wrapped tokens. The coins sit in vaults on their home chains, secured by about 100 independent node operators.Secured assetsSecured assets are native coins deposited into THORChain’s vaults and held one to one on THORChain, such as BTC-BTC for Bitcoin. Apps use them for trading, lending and more, and they can be withdrawn back to their home chain as the real coin.Wrapped tokenA wrapped token stands in for a coin from another chain, such as WBTC for Bitcoin on Ethereum. It is worth the real coin only as long as whoever holds the original keeps it safe and honors redemptions.Bunker modeBunker mode is Justin Drake’s name for a calm, early move of crypto to addresses whose public keys stay hidden behind a hash, in case elliptic curves break. In Redacted, one click puts your account on 25 words, with no wallet key behind it.

Sources: Bifrost, TSS and vaults, THORChain documentation · Vault behaviors, THORChain developer docs

Updated November 1, 2026. All terms