• Circle and Tether, two prominent stablecoin issuers, frozen $65 million in assets related to a suspected exploit of Multichain.
• Multiple ecosystems were affected by the unprecedented withdrawal activity.
• Investigations are ongoing to determine the cause of the abnormal asset transfers.
Stablecoin Issuers Freeze $65 Million in Assets
Stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether have frozen $65 million in assets linked to a suspected exploit of Multichain, a cross-chain router protocol. The decision was made after significant unexplained outflows occurred from the Multichain MPC bridge on July 6th. Three addresses that received a substantial amount of $63.2 million in USD Coin from Multichain were identified and frozen by 0xScope. Additionally, two addresses labeled as “Multichain Suspicious Addresses” on Etherscan had over $2.5 million in Tether frozen by Tether themselves.
Impact Across Multiple Ecosystems
The incident resulted in the withdrawal of over $125 million worth of cryptocurrencies from multiple wallets, impacting various ecosystems including Multichain’s Fantom bridge, Dogechain, Moonriver, Kava and Conflux. It is still unclear what caused these abnormal asset transfers at this time.
Multichain Halts Services
In response to the situation, Multichain took to Twitter to announce the temporary suspension of its services without specifying a return date and advised users against utilizing its bridging service due to stuck transactions on source chains.
Investigations Into Exploit Begin
Fantom protocol CEO Michael Kong has stated that he does not believe this incident was an ordinary hack since no further movement was observed with the assets sent into attacker-controlled wallets. Investigations are ongoing at this time to uncover further details regarding this case.
Conclusion
Circle and Tether’s swift response freezing more than $65 million in assets has certainly tempered any potential losses for users across multiple ecosystems resulting from an unknown exploit involving Multichain’s bridging service . While investigations continue into this perplexing development , it is clear that both companies are taking all necessary steps towards ensuring their customers‘ funds remain secure and undamaged during these tumultuous times .