Cross-chain protocol Multichain started confirming transactions over 100 days after it was hacked for $126 million.
Photo by Shubham Dhage on Unsplash
Posted November 2, 2023 at 1:24 am EST.
Activity on cross-chain protocol Multichain appeared to have resumed on Wednesday, with blockchain explorer showing transactions were confirmed on the bridge.
According to an update from blockchain security platform Cyvers, the chain resumed processing transactions at around 9 am on Nov. 1 – the first time since it was hacked for more than $126 million in July.
🚨UPDATE🚨 On July 6th, @MultichainOrg faced a $126M hack! We have detected real time 👇
🚀But today exciting news! @MultichainOrg has resumed processing bridge transactions after 117 days of downtime.
💼 Many bridge transactions successfully went through.
🛡️ We’re closely… https://t.co/KoizCgXYeJ pic.twitter.com/Nw4muay5xE— 🚨 Cyvers Alerts 🚨 (@CyversAlerts) November 1, 2023
Indeed, data from the blockchain explorer shows that some crypto deposits were successfully confirmed on the destination chain, while some transactions appear to be confirmed on the Multichain explorer but not on the destination blockchain.
The development sparked confusion among market participants, seeing as the protocol was supposedly hacked earlier this year. At the time, Unchained reported that more than $102 million was withdrawn from Multichain’s Fantom bridge contract on Ethereum.
Social media updates from the Multichain team suggested that they themselves were in the dark about the large withdrawals, and blockchain security firm CertiK concluded that the hack was likely a result of a private key compromise.
“The Multichain service stopped currently, and all bridge transactions will be stuck on the source chains. There is no confirmed resume time. Please don’t use the Multichain bridging service now,” wrote the Multichain team on X shortly after the event.
At press time, the official Multichain X account had not confirmed that its services had been resumed, or issued any statement at all regarding the transaction activity on Wednesday.
“Looks like an inside job to temporarily enable it to drain some funds as it was disabled again shortly afterwards. 100s of stuck transactions since,” tweeted one user on X.
