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

Stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether froze more than $65 million in assets tied to the alleged exploit of the Multichain cross-chain router protocol. The move follows large unexplained departures from the Multichain MPC bridge on July 6.

According to knowledge graph protocol 0xScope, three addresses that received at least $63.2 million worth of USD Coin (USDC) from the Multichain are now frozen. Another report from the Fantom Foundation grades that more than $2.5 million worth of Tether (USDT) had also been frozen from two addresses listed by Etherscan as “Suspicious Multi-Chain Addresses.”

More than $125 million worth of cryptocurrency was withdrawn from various wallets on July 6, affecting the Multichain Fantom Bridge, as well as the Dogechain, Moonriver, Kava, and Conflux ecosystems. The cause of the abnormal transfer of assets remains unclear.

Update: Tether has frozen these accounts with >2.5 million USDT in Ethereum transferred from Multichain:https://t.co/bFYACtQ7t6https://t.co/zlRybitcJC

Thank you @tether_to and to the team for their quick response.

— Fantom Foundation (@FantomFDN) July 8, 2023

On Twitter, Multichain Announced suspended current services, without specifying a return date. "Please don't use the Multichain bridging service now," she warned, adding that "all bridging transactions will get stuck on the source chains."

Fantom protocol CEO Michael Kong reportedly saying that the transfer of funds "does not appear to be a normal hack," as the assets sent to the alleged attacker's wallets were not transferred elsewhere. Investigations are still ongoing.

Multichain allows users to transfer tokens between different networks. It has faced technical and operational challenges since its leadership disappeared a few weeks ago. Bridges like Multichain are among the most vulnerable targets for crypto hackers, with several incidents reported in 2022.

A recent report from blockchain security firm SlowMist revealed that since 2012, more than $30 billion worth of crypto assets have been hacked in hundreds of incidents. The five most common hacks are smart contract exploits, rug thefts, quick loan attacks, scams, and private key leaks.

The total number of incidents consisted of 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 more than $10 billion has been lost to crypto exchange hacks over the past decade.

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