The unannounced moves impacted Multichain’s Fantom, Moonriver and Dogechain bridges
Multichain tarafından yürütülen çoklu köprü sözleşmeleri, Perşembe günü bir dizi popüler tokenin büyük çıkışlarını gördü. Çıkışlar için hemen bir açıklama yapılmadı.
Habersiz hareketler, Multichain’in Fantom köprüsünü wBTC, USDC, USDT ve bir avuç altcoin’deki neredeyse tüm varlıklarından çıkardı. Birlikte, varlıkların değeri 120 milyon doların üzerindeydi. Zincir üstü dedektifler, etkinliği oldukça sıra dışı olarak nitelendirdi; Fantom Vakfı CEO’su Michael Kong, CoinDesk’e “incelediğini” söyledi.
Multichain, başarısız teknoloji ve AWOL CEO’su nedeniyle bir aydan fazla bir süredir baskı altında. Multichain’in Fantom, Moonriver ve Dogecoin köprü sözleşmelerinden açıklanamayan üçlü çıkış, kripto Twitter’da bir hack’in olabileceğine dair korkulara yol açtı. Yorum için Multichain’e hemen ulaşılamadı.
With information hard to come by, some crypto projects began informing their communities Thursday that they were unaffected by the “potential exploit” of Multichain. “As of right now, Abracadabra is not affected by the possible Multichain exploit, we are investigating with the involved parties to learn more,” the team behind Magic Internet Money stablecoin wrote in the project Discord.
Assets transferred out of the Multichain Fantom bridge, with at least $20 million of the altcoins including DAI, LINK and USDT going to 0x9d57. Other transfers saw outbound moves of 1,023 wBTC (~$30.9 million) 7,214 wETH (~$13.6 million), and $57 million USDC between two separate addresses.
Multichain’in Moonriver köprü sözleşmesi, neredeyse tüm wBTC, USDT, USDC ve DAI’nin 0x48BeAD’e gitmesiyle 6,8 milyon dolarlık token çıkışı gördü. Mulitchain’in Dogecoin köprüsü olarak tanımlanan bir adres, USDC’de 600.000 doların üzerinde çıkış gördü.
The actions showcase how Multichain’s faltering infrastructure and AWOL CEO are sending shockwaves through Fantom, the blockchain most heavily dependent on Multichain’s bridges.
Takeaways
A handful of decentralized finance (DeFi) projects on the Fantom blockchain (FTM) began moving crypto to other networks this week out of fear that Multichain’s (MULTI) mounting bridging crisis could imperil their tokens’ value.
On Wednesday, the decentralized exchange (DEX) Beethoven X sent $300,000 in treasury stablecoins from Fantom to Ethereum; protocol builder Byte Masons did the same with ether (ETH) and USD coin (USDC) it used in trading pools. Earlier this week, DeFi yield farm Beefy sent $200,000 in tokens owned by Binance from Fantom to BSC at the request of the world’s largest exchange.
Disclosed on Discord servers, the actions showcase how Multichain’s faltering infrastructure and AWOL CEO are sending shockwaves through Fantom, the blockchain most heavily dependent on Multichain’s bridges for moving popular cryptocurrencies into and out of its on-chain economy.
For now, the moves appear precautionary: Multichain’s Fantom infrastructure worked fine at press time even as its routes to other, minor chains were failing. Michael Kong, the CEO of the Fantom Foundation, told CoinDesk the “Multichain bridge is fully operational and safe.”
But fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) is spreading fast. “The current FUD surrounding Multichain has severely impacted the entire Fantom ecosystem,” a contributor to the Mummy (MMY) exchange told their Discord community early Thursday, “and Mummy is not exempt from this wave.”
Multichain’s vital role at Fantom
The fears stem from Multichain’s importance to Fantom. Nearly 40% of cryptocurrencies on the Fantom network (excluding FTM itself) got there by way of Multichain’s Fantom bridges, according to quant trading firm Thanefield. If anything were to happen to that connection, those wrapped assets could de-peg and in the worst case get stranded.
A CoinDesk review of nine Discord servers for Fantom-based DeFi projects found community members and project leaders are growing increasingly concerned with the state of Multichain – the bridge-builder who can’t maintain its servers because its CEO has disappeared – and how its crisis could batter Fantom.
No one is talking about abandoning Fantom outright. On the contrary, the messages reviewed by CoinDesk showed that even those teams taking the most aggressive measures remain publicly committed to the ecosystem, a major outpost for DeFi traders. They’re looking to Fantom Foundation to broker new partnerships that would solve the current dependency on Multichain.
One surefire way to solve the crisis would be to bring a native form of the USDC stablecoin to Fantom, thereby eliminating the need for wrapped versions whose fates are dependent on the bridges who issue them. But that hasn’t happened yet, leaving Multichain’s bridged stablecoins (80% of stablecoins on Fantom are bridged in via Multichain, according to Thanefield) as the predominant trading pairs in the ecosystem.
Leaving Multichain-linked assets
Some protocols are moving away from Multichain-linked assets even now. The DEX Equalizer (EQUAL) has begun incentivizing traders toward USDC issued by bridge-builder Axelar over that of Multichain, the ecosystem’s predominant stablecoin.
The team building Hector (HEC) has told its community that stablecoin airlifts to other chains are on the table. At decentralized lending protocol Tarot (TAROT), the team said Thursday it is “reevaluating” its risk framework for integrating bridged stablecoins.
A depegging of USDC could spell trouble for derivatives protocols reliant on tokens meant to trade for $1 staying at that level, said GrapeHayz, a pseudonymous member of Equalizer’s Discord.
“I hope you can think about the domino effect if the bridged USDC token is not worth 1 dollar but maybe 60-70 cents,” he said in a Discord message invoking the fallout from Terra Luna’s collapse. “I don’t think we will get there but this is the elephant in the room.”
Beethoven X (BEETS), the decentralized exchange that’s already moved $300,000 in Fantom-based stablecoins to Ethereum, is now scrambling to further insulate itself from a potential breakdown of Multichain’s Fantom bridges. This morning its key contributors submitted an emergency governance proposal that would move $1 million in treasury-owned liquidity to other blockchains.
24 Mayıs akşamında Multichain ağında bir takım problemler meydana geldi. Ağın 1,8 milyar dolarlık rezervi, tehlikeye işaret ediyor…
24 Mayıs akşamında Multichain ağında bir takım problemler meydana geldi. Sorunların ardından Multichain kurucusuna bir daha ulaşılamadı. Binance’de belirsizlikten tedirgin oldu ve MULTI işlemlerini askıya aldı. Yaklaşık 1.8 milyar doların kitli olduğu ağ, bu altcoin’leri tehlikeye atıyor.
Multichain 1,8 milyar dolarlık kripto para rezervine sahip
Piyasası araştırmacısı Boring Sleuth’a göre, Multichain şu anda farklı ağlara yayılmış farklı coin’lerde 1,8 milyar dolar tutuyor. Araştırmacı, Multichain’in bir rug pull operasyonu için hamle yapması durumunda, piyasada felakete yol açacağını söylüyor.
Sleuth’ın açıklamalarına göre, “Multichain, yalnızca Fantom’da değil, birkaç zincirde kontrol altında 1,8 milyar dolarlık kilitli varlığa sahip. Gerçekten rug pull yaptılarsa, tüm ağlardaki tüm coin’ler üzerindeki fiyatları etkileyecektir.”
Yorumcular, Multichain’in UST benzeri bir çöküş hissi verdiği görüşünde. Kriptokoin.com olarak aktardığımız üzere, 2022’nin Terra ve FTX iflasları ayı piyasasını tarihe diplere ulaştırmıştı.
Fantom (FTM), krizden en çok etkilenen altcoin
Fantom’daki toplam 1,66 milyar dolar değerindeki varlıkların %40’ı Multichain’de paketlenmişti. Şu an itibariyle, Fantom ağındaki toplam varlıklar 1,66 milyar dolar. Multichain’in rezervi bunların %40’ını temsil ediyor.
Bu arada Multichain, kripto alanındaki en büyük Blockchain köprülerinden biridir. Böylece, birden çok ağda token değiş tokuşunu kolaylaştırır. Binance Chain, Polygon, Avalanche ve Ethereum gibi en iyi platformlar, Multichain köprüsünü kullanıyor.
Multichain ayrıca, akıllı sözleşmeleri destekleyen Fantom için resmi cross-chain köprüdür. Bir dier araştırmacı Colin Wu şunları belirtiyor:
Fantom’daki ana stablecoin 191 milyon, USDC ve 82 milyon USDT varlığı temel olarak Multichain tarafından veriliyor.
1.8 milyarlık altcoin projesi hakkındaki kırmızı bayraklar
Multichain protokolünün kullanıcılarını dolandırmak için hamleler yaptığı varsayımının tamamı, cross-chain işlemlerin mücbir sebepler nedeniyle kullanılamadığı duyurusundan geldi. Protokol, o sırada ağı tekrar çevrimiçi hale getirmek için çalıştığını bildirdi. Ancak normal operasyonların ne zaman devam edeceğine dair belirli bir zaman çizelgesi paylaşmadı.
Protokol daha sonra, kullanıcılara olay nedeniyle maruz kalabilecekleri her türlü zararı geri ödeme sözü verdi.
While most of the cross-chain routes of Multichain protocol are functioning well, some of the cross-chain routes are unavailable due to force majeure, and the time for service to resume is unknown. After service is restored, pending transactions will be credited automatically.…
— Multichain (Previously Anyswap) (@MultichainOrg) May 24, 2023
Multichain protokolünün liderleri artık radar altında olduğundan, firmanın kontrolü altındaki fonları takip etmek artık daha kolay. Böylece, belki de büyük bir kripto çöküşü olarak ortaya çıkabilecek herhangi bir potansiyel çekişmenin etkisini hafifletmeye yardımcı olabilir.
FTM ve MULTI fiyatları düşüşte
Multichain kriziyle ilgili endişeler yayılırken Fantom, Multichain Köprüsü’nün normal şekilde çalıştığını belirterek durumu Twitter’a taşıdı. Bu güvence, FTM fiyatında herhangi bir büyük fiyat düzeltmesini engelledi. FTM şu anda hafif bir düşüşle 0,331880 dolardan işlem görüyor.
Öte yandan MULTI, Fud haberlerine yenik düşüyor. Fiyatı ağ ile ilgili sıkıntıların ortaya çıktığı 24 Mayıs’tan bu yana serbest düşüşte.
With facts hard to come by, a coterie of crypto players are taking action.
Key players in the crypto ecosystem are shoring up their defenses amid growing concerns over the state of Multichain, a major venue for moving assets between different blockchains.
Four days after apparent technical issues started throttling some users’ ability to withdraw tokens from the protocol, wild rumors over Multichain’s safety and the fate of its team are filling the void created by the platform’s silence. A single tweet blaming some cross-chain breaks on “force majeure” has only added fuel to the widespread speculation that something is amiss.
The light-on-facts landscape is pushing a growing number of entities to mitigate risk now – regardless of Multichain’s true state. Their responses are highlighting how crypto bridges create the potential for a world of hurt that goes well beyond the flashiest and well-trodden risk to bridges (getting hacked by North Korea).
The situation is compounded by Multichain’s prominence among bridges. It is the third-largest bridging protocol by transfer volume and total value locked, according to data from Messari and DeFiLlama.
Like most bridges, Multichain uses a mint-and-lock mechanism to move assets between the 92 blockchains it interacts with. For example, if a holder of USDC stablecoin bridges the asset from Ethereum to Fantom via Multichain, the token gets locked up in a smart contract on Ethereum and then issued anew on Fantom – in this case, as a “wrapped” token called anyUSDC.
Multichain’s anyUSDC and other wrapped USDC tokens like it dominate 50% of Fantom’s stablecoin market, according to DeFiLlama. This is in spite of all USDC on Fantom being “bridged” assets instead of “native” that Circle issues directly onto the chain. Thus, all the USDC tokens on Fantom are reliant on bridges to retain their value.
This setup works as long as the bridge does. At the height of Multichain’s troubles this week, it didn’t, and wrapped USDC tokens on Fantom lost their dollar peg. Some arbitrage traders told CoinDesk they bought wrapped USDC tokens at a 30% discount during the fracas over Multichain, which is responsible for 80% of the stablecoins on Fantom.
Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, seemingly pointed to the risks of non-native assets Friday with a tweet imploring traders to “remember to check you trust the issuer behind stablecoins you hold.”
The Fantom ecosystem’s high reliance on Multichain hasn’t spooked market participants into a mass exodus quite yet. Overall numbers like total value locked remain rather steady despite some outflows to other chains, according to data from terminal-builder Parsec.
“The multichain bridge is fully operational and safe with Fantom. Whatever is happening internally with multichain has no impact on the bridged assets on Fantom,” Michael Kong, CEO of the Fantom Foundation, told CoinDesk.
This chart shows anyUSDC transfers from Fantom (blue) and other chains into Arbitrum over the last 10 days. The uptick corresponds with the swirling rumors. (Parsec)
Squid Router – a bridging protocol built on Axelar that unlike Multichain uses swaps instead of wrapped tokens to move value across chains – also reported a surge in activity during the Multichain madless. Bridge transactions on Axelar itself increased sixfold during the spike, people familiar with the matter said.
But Multichain’s method of wrapping assets to bridge them has spooked players beyond the stablecoin markets. On Thursday, Binance said it would temporarily suspend deposits in 10 Multichain-bridged tokens “while we await clarity from the Multichain team.”
Bridging aggregation service Li.Fi also took preventative measures yesterday and shuttered access to Multichain.
Amid all this Multichain’s namesake asset MULTI has suffered. It was trading at $3.8 at press time, a 54% drop from where it was before the crisis of confidence began.
