On October 9, 2026, Tether temporarily froze approximately 1.45 million USDT in 4 THORChain wallet addresses on TRON, resulting in the interruption of exchange and related functions. The blacklist measure lasted for about 3 hours, after which all 4 addresses were lifted from restrictions, and the balances within these addresses remained unchanged.

Wu Blockchain cites The Defiant reporting that during the freeze period, THORChain suspended exchanges and some functions related to TRON; after the restrictions were lifted, the relevant services have been restored. THORChain, co-founder Chad Barraford, stated that the team did not receive any prior notice from Tether.

Tether freezing USDT on TRON how this leads to exchange interruptions

Blacklist measures prevented the affected vaults from transferring out USDT, thereby disrupting the fund pool assets used to support cross-chain transactions. According to Crypto Briefing, operations related to exchanges and liquidity providers based on TRON were almost immediately shut down after this occurred.

THORChain allows users to exchange native assets between different blockchains without the need to encapsulate them or entrust them to centralized exchanges for custody. Its vault holds the pooled assets required for these exchanges.

Crypto Briefing explained that Tether's freezing of USDT on TRON this time was achieved through the addBlackList function within the token contract. This control mechanism prevents the listed addresses from sending USDT. In this incident, these tokens remained in the treasury, but their transfer was blocked.

About 3 hours later, the operation to lift the restrictions covered all 4 THORChain addresses. However, this does not mean that the entire blocklist was cleared: another 19 addresses that were listed on the blocklist along with these vault addresses were still on the blocklist at the time of the report's publication.

This article was generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence and has been reviewed by an editorial team.