Circle, the official issuer of USDC, the second largest stablecoin by supply allocation, has frozen $63 million in the Multichain hack. Etherscan data compiled on July 7 Offers that the stablecoin issuer froze $27.65 million, $30.1 million, and $5.5 million in three transactions, hampering the hacker’s efforts to cash out.
Multiple sequence, circular interventions
Multichain, a cross-chain protocol router, was hacked on July 7, resulting in the loss of more than $126 million in various tokens. The exploit came after the attacker illegally accessed a Multichain Multi-Party Computation (MPC) address, which stores funds locked between the block chains.
Then, the hacker withdrew the funds from the address and transferred them to an externally controlled wallet. Fantom Bridge was negatively affected by this influx as the hacker siphoned off several tokens, including wBTC, USDC, and USDT. There were a few other cryptocurrencies that the hacker stole.
Funds have also been stripped from the Moonriver Bridge, with observers indicating that at least $6.8 million in various coins, including USDC, has been moved to an offshore address. It is also reported that a Dogecoin related Multichain address has also lost more than $600,000.
The stolen USDC is now frozen and cannot be transferred, to the relief of the community. However, it is not clear if Circle will reverse the funds back to Multichain. In the past, Tether Holdings and Circle, the two central issuers of the world’s most liquid stablecoins, have intervened to prevent bad actors from cashing out.
Hack Doubles the Scourge of Multichain, Bitcoin Inc
Peckshield, a blockchain security company, was the first to do so select Extraordinary transfers of more than $118 million in assets from Multichain Fantom and Moonriver Bridge. The company went on to tag the team behind the cross-chain protocol, who acted promptly.
In response to the hack, Multichain He said The outflow was “abnormal” and halted all activity while recommending that users pause the protocol and revoke approval of all contracts.
Although the Multichain team has assured the community that the private keys that control asset movements across the bridge are secure and stored on-chain, their technology appears to have flaws, which led to the hack. The breakout indicates what has also been turbulence in the past few weeks. Besides delayed transactions and what the team described as “multiple issues,” the founder is missing.
Despite the attack, bitcoin prices are flat as of writing. The coin crossed the $30,000 psychological support level, rejecting bear pressure from July 6. However, FTM, Phantom’s native currency, is freely falling, down 20% from its July highs.
Featured image from Canva, chart from TradingView