- Multichain developers warned customers to stop using the service
- More than $2.6B has been lost to bridge-based attacks in the last few years
Cross-chain bridge Multichain registered outflows of almost $130 million worth of different tokens across its platforms on Dogechain, Moonriver, and Fantom blockchain networks on July 6. The bridge has now officially confirmed that an exploit impacted $130 million in tokens supplied by users. Its developers warned customers to stop using its service, as per Friday tweets seen by CoinDesk.
An investigation has commenced
Developers said they were “currently investigating,” adding:
It is recommended that all users suspend the use of Multichain services and revoke all contract approvals related to Multichain. The Multichain service stopped currently, and all bridge transactions will be stuck on the source chains. There is no confirmed resume time.
At time of writing, Multichain’s MULTI tokens were trading for $2.63, down 15.88% in the last 24 hours according to Coinmarketcap data.
Multichain bridges: Crucial, but vulnerable
Multichain bridges let users transfer tokens between blockchains. They are a crucial and extremely vulnerable part of the crypto ecosystem. DefiLlama data shows more than $2.6 billion was lost to bridge-based attacks in the last few years.
Blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain estimates that USD Coin made up the majority of stolen tokens - $62 million, followed by $31 million in Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) and $13 million in Wrapped Ether (wETH).
At time of writing, no tokens had been transferred to crypto exchanges or run through Tornado Cash or other privacy mixers.
FTM also lost value
Related cryptos also lost value on the news. Fantom’s token FTM is down 11.28% in the last 24 hours. The Fantom Foundation tweeted that FTM on Opera, Wrapped FTM, and FTM ERC-20 were not affected because the token was neither issued nor managed by Multichain.
Dogechain developers confirmed that their network did not suffer direct impact. However, they requested users revoke permissions to Multichain’s Dogechain bridge.
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