🚨PROTOCOL UPGRADE - v.3.13.0 Developers have shipped one of the most stability-focused releases in months, with over 20 merge requests improving swap reliability, quote performance, slash logic, migration handling, UTXO robustness, and testing infrastructure. The upgrade delivers major breakthroughs in network safety, quote correctness, migration resilience, and outbound recovery, while introducing new capabilities like scheduled migrations and limit order quotes. Let's dig into it 👇

1⃣ Headline Upgrades ✅ 82× faster Quote API - massive performance restoration when the advanced swap queue is enabled ✅ Scheduled Migrations - migrations can now safely run after upgrades without consensus risk ✅ Intelligent Outbound Recovery - reverse swaps + treasury fallback protect user funds ✅ Limit Order Quote API - full support for limit-order quotes for integrators & UIs Alongside these are dozens of fixes to slash logic, UTXO ancestor handling, WASM sync, min-amount accuracy, testing, docs, and node stability - continuing to harden THORChain for high-volume usage and safe cross-chain liquidity routing.

2⃣ SCHEDULED MIGRATIONS: A SAFER UPGRADE PATH PR: !4331 Upgrades that trigger outbounds have historically been risky, and migrations sometimes couldn't complete within the signing window, causing failures or stalled rollouts. v3.13.0 introduces a Scheduled Migration Manager, allowing migrations to be executed after upgrades at a height configured via Mimir (ScheduledMigration).

3⃣ The Benefits Decouples migrations from upgrade block - Ensures outbounds are signed during stable post-upgrade periods - Dramatically reduces risk of migration failures - Allows re-running the failed v3.12 migrations with the new system - Re-adds vault pubkeys to pubkey responses, enabling retired-vault ages to be restored This is now expected to become the standard pattern for future migrations⚡️

4⃣ QUOTE API PERFORMANCE FIX Fix !4330 The Quote API experienced a severe slowdown when the advanced swap queue was enabled, due to unnecessary TTL expiration checks that ran during quote simulations. Each quote request was scanning 43,200 block heights and performing tens of thousands of database reads. None of this logic was needed for simulations and caused quote times to spike dramatically. v3.13 corrects this by skipping TTL handling entirely during simulation mode. This restores quote performance from roughly 41 ms per call back down to about 0.5 ms, an 82x improvement. There are no functional changes to swap logic. The release also introduces a complete performance testing suite with benchmarks, profiling tools, and automated flamegraph analysis. Quotes now remain fast and reliable regardless of queue configuration.

5⃣ INTELLIGENT OUTBOUND RECOVERY !4315 - Outbounds that hit MaxOutboundAttempts previously had limited recovery options, often requiring manual intervention. - v3.13 adds a new recovery system! For swap outbounds: • The system performs a reverse swap, returning funds to the original sender in the original asset • Supports custom refund addresses • Falls back to treasury recovery if a reverse swap cannot be created For non-swap outbounds: • Refunds and ragnarok outbounds are swapped to RUNE and sent to the treasury for recovery All scenarios are covered with full test coverage, guaranteeing that funds never remain stuck and always reach a deterministic recovery path. This greatly improves settlement reliability across all connected chains.

6⃣ LIMIT ORDER QUOTE ENDPOINT PR: !4313 v3.13 adds a dedicated API endpoint for limit order quotes. Integrators can now request accurate limit order pricing directly from THORChain without relying on workarounds or standard swap quotes. The endpoint handles TTLs, max streaming quantities, and all advanced swap queue rules, with full OpenAPI documentation included. The Benefits Here Are: • Correct limit order quoting for UIs and DEXs • Easier integration for developers • Foundation for future limit order features on the App Layer

7⃣ SIGNIFICANT UPGRADES Other than these big upgrades, there are also several significant improvements worth highlighting. Here is the full rundown. 🔵 Fix Slash Logic and Cancel Handling !4326 and !4301 Cancel transactions used to trigger false slash events and could even cause vault insolvencies. v3.13 corrects this by identifying legitimate cancel transactions and excluding them from slashing. Additionally, slash-induced halts are now granular. Instead of halting the entire chain, the system only halts signing or trading for the affected chain, reducing network impact and improving safety. Also fixes double deduction issues where gas spend was incorrectly counted twice. 🔵 Avoid Sync Failure on WASM Quote !4328 Swap quotes were made to error on lagging nodes, but this introduced consensus problems for contract-executed quotes. v3.13 adds a context flag to allow WASM contract quotes to bypass lag checks, preventing app-hash mismatches and ensuring stable WASM integration. 🔵 Fix Crash on Migration Outbounds !4327 Fixes a crash in the event system triggered during migration-related outbounds, improving migration reliability and compatibility with the new scheduled migration process. 🔵 Fix Critical Division by Zero Edge Cases !4317 Four division-by-zero failures were identified across consensus-critical code paths, including outbound scheduling, loan opening, emission rewards, and outbound fees. v3.13 adds full guard checks in each case to prevent chain halts or reward calculation failures. Strengthens the chain against misconfigurations and rare edge conditions. 🔵 Fix UTXO Mempool Ancestor Limit Errors !4287 Bitcoin-style chains limit transactions with over 25 unconfirmed ancestors. v3.13 prevents -26 errors by checking ancestor counts before selecting UTXOs and skipping ones that exceed chain limits. It improves UTXO outbound reliability on BTC, LTC, and DOGE.

8⃣ TECHNICAL / FOR NODES For the real tech people and core contributors who want to get into the weeds, here is a list of the more technical and node-focused upgrades. ⚡️Fix Affiliate Swap FromAddress for Secured and Trade Assets !4243 Affiliate fee swaps involving secured or trade assets were incorrectly using external chain addresses, causing bech32 decoding failures. Now these swaps correctly use the reserve module address, fixing affiliate fee flow for integrators. ⚡️ Account for Dust and Affiliate Fee in Recommended Min Amount !4288 Adds outbound dust thresholds and affiliate fee deductions to the recommended minimum swap amount, eliminating cases where swaps above the recommended amount still failed due to dust rules. ⚡️ Retry Deposit Handler Improvements !4129 App Layer contracts can now submit multiple MsgDeposit calls within one transaction hash. v3.13 generalizes tx-hash indexing so these multi-deposit patterns are handled correctly. ⚡️ Update CLI Version Pins !4172 Updates version pins for CLI components to fix breakages in mocknet builds and ensure toolchain compatibility. ⚡️ Remove Redundant Test Boilerplate !4333 leans up older redundant test helper logic that is no longer needed, reducing clutter and simplifying the test suite. ⚡️ Improve Claude Code Review Tools !4318 Refactors internal review tooling for Claude-based code review automation. ⚡️ Improve Test Flexibility and Developer Experience !4314 Adds support for test parallelism, name-based test filtering, and positional test paths. This makes running targeted tests much easier and aligns the main test command with test-regression behavior. Fully backward compatible with existing test commands. ⚡️ Upgrade Documentation Improvements !4312 Clarifies version-upgrade configuration documentation to avoid confusion that occurred during recent stagenet rollouts.

🧠 To Wrap It Up v3.13.0 is a stability-focused upgrade that strengthens many of THORChain’s core systems. While it does not introduce major new chains or highly visible features, it brings a wide set of improvements that make the network faster, safer, and more reliable overall. This release focuses on tightening fundamentals: restoring quote performance, improving migration processes, adding resilient outbound recovery, and introducing a dedicated limit-order quote endpoint. Alongside these come many fixes across slash logic, UTXO handling, WASM execution, testing tools, and documentation. For users, this means smoother swaps and more consistent behavior. For integrators, it means clearer APIs and better accuracy. For node operators and contributors, it means a more robust and predictable protocol. v3.13.0 continues the steady work of hardening THORChain’s foundations and preparing the network for future growth. LFG Chads✊