Circle, Tether freezes over $65M in assets transferred from Multichain

Multichain’s operations have been halted following an unexplained transfer of millions of dollars worth of crypto assets on July 6. Circle and Tether, the issuers of stablecoins, have frozen assets totaling more than $65 million, which are believed to be linked to a suspected exploit of Multichain’s cross-chain router protocol. Specifically, three addresses that received at least $63.2 million in USD Coin (USDC) and two addresses containing over $2.5 million in Tether (USDT) have been frozen. This comes after a significant outflow from the Multichain MPC bridge on the aforementioned date. The abnormal transfer of over $125 million in cryptocurrencies affected various wallets associated with Multichain, including Fantom Bridge, Dogechain, Moonriver, Kava, and Conflux’s ecosystems. The reason behind this unusual asset transfer remains unknown.

Multichain took to Twitter to announce the suspension of its current services, without providing a specific timeline for resumption. It advised against using the Multichain bridging service at present, cautioning that all bridge transactions would be stuck on the source chains. According to Fantom protocol CEO Michael Kong, the fund transfer appears to be an atypical hack since the assets sent to the alleged attacker’s wallets were not further transferred. Investigations into the incident are ongoing.

Multichain facilitates the transfer of tokens across different networks, but it has been grappling with technical and operational difficulties since its leadership disappeared a few weeks ago. Bridging services like Multichain are particularly susceptible to crypto hackers, with numerous incidents reported in 2022.

A recent report from blockchain security firm SlowMist disclosed that over $30 billion in crypto assets has been hacked in hundreds of incidents since 2012. The most common types of hacks include smart contract vulnerabilities, rug pulls, flash loan attacks, scams, and private key leaks. The report also revealed that there were 118 exchange hacks, 217 Ethereum ecosystem hacks, 162 BNB Smart Chain ecosystem hacks, 119 EOS ecosystem hacks, and 85 hacks involving nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Over the past decade, crypto exchange hacks alone have resulted in losses exceeding $10 billion.

source