Circle and Tether freeze $65 million withdrawn from Multichain
Date: 2023-07-09 Author: Karina Ziganova Categories: IN WORLD
The Multichain protocol suspended operations after attackers withdrew millions of dollars worth of crypto assets from it on July 6.
Stablecoin issuers Circle (USDC) and Tether (USDT) have frozen more than $65 million in assets linked to an alleged exploit for the Multichain cross-chain router protocol. The move follows an unexplained large outflow of funds from the Multichain MPC bridge on July 6.
According to the 0xScope Knowledge Graph protocol, three addresses that received at least $63.2 million in USDC are now frozen. And the Fantom Foundation reported that Tether froze two addresses with a balance of more than $2.5 million — Etherscan marked them as "Suspicious Multichain Addresses"
More than $125 million worth of cryptocurrencies have been withdrawn from multiple wallets, affecting the Fantom bridge, as well as the Dogechain, Moonriver, Kava and Conflux ecosystems. In addition to USDC and USDT, the stolen tokens included 1020 wrapped BTC ($30.9 million), 7200 wrapped ETH ($13.7 million), DAI ($4 million), as well as Chainlink, Curve DAO, YFI and Wootrade Network coins. The cause of the incident is still unclear. Multichain announced the suspension of work, noting that all transactions made with the help of bridges will be stuck in the original blockchains.
The CEO of the Fantom protocol, Michael Kong, stated that the transfer of funds does not look like a regular hack, since the assets sent to the wallets of the alleged attackers were not transferred to other addresses or crypto mixers. The investigation is still ongoing.
Multichain is going through hard times
Over the past few months, Multichain has experienced a number of technical challenges. The project team also revealed that it had lost contact with its CEO after rumors of his detention in China.
The crisis has worsened since the beginning of June. Back then, server management issues caused by the CEO's absence forced the protocol to suspend service to a number of blockchains.
