Over $120M Drained From Multichain Bridge

Multichain, a cross-chain bridging protocol that operates on dozens of blockchains, has been hit by an exploit whose cause is yet to be determined. The team behind the protocol has confirmed that over $120M of digital assets were transferred to unknown wallets and that it is investigating the incident.

Multichain has asked users to revoke all approvals related to its smart contracts and to stop using its services.

Following the mass transfers, some $121M in assets comprising wBTC, USDC, and USDT, as well as a basket of altcoins formerly held on Multichain’s Fantom bridge, now reside among numerous separate wallet addresses.

Fantom, a Layer 1 blockchain that uses Multichain as its primary bridge, released a message acknowledging, “a situation unfolding on the Multichain bridge. We are actively evaluating the circumstances and will provide an update as soon as we have more to share.”

“Seems like a hack or rug pull,” Twitter user Spreekaway told The Defiant, adding that while it’s difficult to pin down an attack vector, a breach may have occurred as a result of compromised authentication.

Multichain’s MULTI token is down over 15% in the wake of the attack.

LayerZero Denies Involvement

Earlier today, cross-chain interoperability protocol Layer Zero announced support for a number of assets on Fantom, including USDC, USDT, WETH and WBTC. This led to some speculation that the transfers could be related to a bridge migration.

However, in a message shared by Twitter user pcaversaccio, the Layer Zero team confirmed that they were not behind the transfers.

Popsicle Burns ICE Tokens

Before any concrete information became available, Popsicle Finance developer Daniele Sestagalli announced the decision to burn any exposed tokens.

“To leave nothing to chance, we have decided to burn the $ICE tokens that were in the multichain-affected wallet,” Sestagalli tweeted.

He added that Popsicle will be “airdropping the burned $ICE tokens in the form of $WAGMI to Fantom Multichain users. More information about this will be shared in the near future.”

Ongoing Trouble

Multichain’s woes appear to have compounded since early June when server management issues resulting from an absent CEO forced the bridge to suspend services for a number of blockchains.

This previous outage drew attention to Multichain’s lack of redundancy, and the potential risks that such centralization poses to decentralized networks.

Neither Multichain nor Fantom immediately responded to a request for comment from The Defiant.