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Stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether have frozen more than $65 million in assets linked to a suspected exploit of cross-chain routing protocol Multichain. The move comes after an unexplained large outflow from the Multichain MPC bridge on July 6.
According Three addresses that received at least $63.2 million in USD Coin (USDC) from Multichain have now been frozen, according to Knowledge Graph protocol 0xScope. Another report from Phantom Foundation notes Over $2.5 million in Tether (USDT) was also seized from two addresses listed by Etherscan as “multichain suspicious addresses”.
More than $125 million worth of cryptocurrency was withdrawn from multiple wallets on July 6, affecting Multichain’s Phantom Bridge, as well as the ecosystems of Dogchain, Moonriver, Kava, and Conflux. The reason for the unusual transfer of assets is unclear.
UPDATE: Tether has frozen these accounts with 2.5 million USDT on Ethereum transferred from Multichain:https://t.co/bFYACTQ7t6https://t.co/zlRybitcJC
Thank you @tether_to and team for your quick response.
– Phantom Foundation (@FantomFDN) 8 July 2023
on twitter, multichain announced It was suspending the current services, without specifying a date for withdrawal. “Please do not use the multichain bridging service anymore,” it warned, “all bridged transactions will be stuck on the source chain.”
Allegedly Michael Kong, CEO of Phantom Protocol Said The transfer of funds “does not appear to be a typical hack,” as the assets sent to the alleged attacker’s wallet were not transferred elsewhere. The investigation is still going on.
Multichain allows users to transfer tokens between different networks. It has been facing technical and operational challenges since its leadership ended a few weeks ago. Bridges such as Multichain are among the most vulnerable targets for crypto hackers, with several incidents recorded in 2022.
A recent report from blockchain security firm Sloomist revealed that over $30 billion worth of crypto assets have been hacked in hundreds of incidents since 2012. The top five most common hacks are smart contract vulnerabilities, rug pulling, sudden loan strikes, scams, and private key leaks.
The total number of incidents included 118 exchange hacks, 217 Ethereum ecosystem hacks, 162 BNB Smart Chain ecosystem hacks, 119 EOS ecosystem hacks, and 85 hacks involving non-fungible tokens (NFTs). A total of over $10 billion has been lost in crypto exchange hacks over the past decade.
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