What Thorium does
Thorium is a server-side anti-cheat. The plugin on your Minecraft server streams movement, combat and interaction telemetry to Thorium’s detection engine, which predicts what a vanilla client could do every tick and flags what it could not.
Why server-side
A client-side anti-cheat asks the player’s computer whether the player is cheating. Thorium never trusts the client: every judgement is made from what the server observed, so a modified client cannot lie its way past it.
What gets sent
- Position, velocity and ground state per tick
- Combat events: attacks, hit registration, aim deltas
- Block interactions: placement, breaking, reach
- Inventory and container actions
- Client brand and connection latency
- Player IP addresses, used to link alt accounts and catch ban evasion
IP sharing is on by default because it is central to fraud and abuse prevention. Switch off IP Heuristic Analysis in network settings to stop sending them; connected servers pick up the change immediately.
What it does not do
- It does not read files, memory or processes on a player’s machine.
- It does not require players to install anything.
- It does not ban on its own unless you configure a ladder that does.
Latency and performance
Telemetry is batched and compressed, and detection runs off your server’s main thread. The plugin’s per-tick work is a snapshot of already-available state; it does not add packet round-trips to gameplay.