Concerns are rising as abnormally large outflows from the Multichain MPC bridge platform have sparked fears of a potential multimillion-dollar exploit.
On July 6, significant amounts of cryptocurrency were withdrawn from Multichain’s bridges on different chains, leading to suspicions of unauthorized activities.
The withdrawals from Multichain’s Fantom bridge on the Ethereum side amounted to approximately $102 million worth of crypto. In addition, $666,000 was withdrawn from Dogechain, and $5 million was taken from Moonriver.
Specifically, the Fantom bridge’s Ethereum smart contract witnessed the withdrawal of 7,214 Wrapped Ether (WETH) tokens valued at $13.6 million, 1,024 Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) worth $31 million, and $58 million worth of USD Coin (USDC).
The Ethereum contract of the Dogechain bridge saw a withdrawal of $666,000, which accounted for over 86% of its total deposits, leaving only around $100,000 remaining.
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Similarly, the Multichain Moonriver bridge contracts experienced the withdrawal of $5,872,661 worth of USDC and Tether (USDT), leaving approximately $700,000 in assets behind.
The event triggered suspicions of an exploit, with blockchain security firm PeckShield alerting the Multichain team through a tweet highlighting the transactions.
Other on-chain investigators shared similar concerns, referring to the incident as a possible hack.
At the time of publication, it was not confirmed whether the contracts were fully drained or if users had simply withdrawn significant amounts of funds.
Cointelegraph reached out to the Multichain team but did not receive a response by the time the article was published.
Multichain later acknowledged the abnormality of the movements on Twitter and stated that the team was currently investigating the situation.
Multichain operates as a multi-party computation (MPC) bridging network, facilitating the transfer of assets between different chains.
The process involves confirming the locking of assets on one chain and minting derivative assets on the target chain.
Withdrawals reverse this process by ensuring the destruction of derivative coins on the second chain and releasing the backing assets on the first chain.
The Multichain team claims that the cryptographic keys controlling these processes are distributed across multiple shards within the network, making unauthorized withdrawals theoretically impossible.
However, the platform has faced technical issues in recent weeks, including the CEO going missing and delayed transactions.
Binance even suspended withdrawals of some Multichain derivative tokens due to the network’s failure to process transactions promptly.
