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Multichain, once again, hacked? Over 130 million dollars worth of token liquidity withdrawn.

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Up to now, these assets have not been sold or transferred to cryptocurrency mixing services. PeckShield speculates that this may be due to a hacker attack caused by a security vulnerability.

Original Title: "Multichain Crisis Reappears, Over $130 Million Token Liquidity Withdrawn"

Original Author: Mary Liu from BitpushNews

On the morning of July 7th Beijing time, PeckShield, a blockchain security company, discovered that multiple cross-chain bridge contracts operated by Multichain experienced a large outflow of tokens.

As of the time of writing, token liquidity worth over $130 million has been withdrawn. Multichain's Fantom Network, Moonriver, and Dogecoin bridging contracts have all been affected, with Fantom bridge alone suffering over $120 million in liquidity loss. The withdrawn tokens include 58 million USDC, 1,020 WBTC (worth $30.9 million), 7,200 WETH (worth $13.7 million), and 4 million DAI, as well as other tokens such as Chainlink, Curve DAO, YFI, Wootrade Network, and nearly a quarter of UniDex's total supply.

Multichain 再次被黑，流动性损失超 1.3 亿美元

Multichain is supported by multi-party computation involving 21 nodes, and the combination of these nodes requires the signing of authorized transactions for fund flow. The team has not yet made a statement on fund flow. The Fantom Foundation stated that it is aware of "what is happening on the Multichain bridge... We are actively evaluating the situation and will provide the latest information as soon as more information is available."

Reason speculation?

Curve Finance issued a warning on its official account stating that "Multichain may be under attack by hackers. Please withdraw all Multichain assets if you have any."

Multichain 再次被黑，流动性损失超 1.3 亿美元

PeckShield also speculates whether this is related to the cross-chain platform LayerZero adding support for four tokens to match the transferred tokens, but this does not match the complete list of transferred tokens.

LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellegrino responded that the outflow from Multichain is not related to the platform.

He said, "This is a multi-chain hack attack, which has nothing to do with LayerZero 100%." Pellegrino believes that Multichain bridge users may withdraw assets and bring them to LayerZero.

IWintermute research director Igor Igamberdiev pointed out that it is strange that the wallet that received a large amount of USDC had conducted transactions on the old Binance Smart Chain bridge just a few hours ago.

It is unclear whether it is related to Binance's suspension of Multichain cross-chain bridge token deposits and withdrawals.

Binance announced earlier that it will suspend all deposits and withdrawals of ten Multichain bridged tokens, including Polkastarter (POLS), Alchemy Pay (ACH), Beefy.Finance (BIFI), Harvest Finance (FARM), etc., bridged to Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum, Avalanche, and Fantom. Travala (AVA), a token minted on the Ethereum bridge, is also included. However, users can still withdraw them through other networks supported by the exchange.

Cross-chain bridges are common targets for cryptocurrency hackers. Multichain Bridge, formerly known as Anyswap, suffered an $8 million hack in 2021. In early 2022, multiple hackers stole $3 million from Multichain. A white hat hacker later returned $900,000 of the stolen funds.

Since the beginning of this year, Multichain has experienced several technical failures, and its potential crisis has raised concerns among investors.

In May, the Multichain project encountered difficulties in processing bridged transfers, resulting in a large number of transactions being stuck. Multiple paths of the Multichain cross-chain bridge, including Kava, zkSync, and Polygon zkEVM, were unable to operate. The team also confirmed that they were unable to contact CEO Zhaojun, and there were rumors in the community that Zhao was detained in China, and the team has not provided any further updates.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has warned users not to rely on cross-chain bridges. In a blog post earlier this year, he advised people to "minimize reliance on bridges" and to "keep assets on their source chain".

According to DeFiLlama's data, Multichain Bridge currently manages approximately $1.28 billion in assets minted through its cross-chain platform. This includes $693 million minted on Ethereum, $337 million minted on BSC, and $91 million minted on Fantom.

According to the terminal data, the native token MULTI of Multichain fell by 22.15% last month. As of the time of writing, the trading price of MULTI is 2.84 US dollars, with a 24-hour decline of nearly 10%.