• Circle and Tether have frozen more than $65 million in assets related to a suspected exploit of Multichain protocol.
• The incident on July 6 involved the withdrawal of over $125 million worth of cryptocurrencies from multiple wallets, impacting various ecosystems.
• Multichain has temporarily suspended its services due to uncertainty and ongoing investigations are underway to shed light on this perplexing situation.

Circle and Tether Freeze Suspected Exploit Funds

Stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether have frozen $65 million in assets tied to a suspected exploit of Multichain, a cross-chain router protocol. The decision was made after significant unexplained outflows occurred from the Multichain MPC bridge on July 6th. Additionally, two addresses labeled as “Multichain Suspicious Addresses”on Etherscan had over $2.5 million in Tether frozen by Tether as well.

Affected Ecosystems

The incident affected multiple ecosystems including Multichain’s Fantom bridge, Dogechain, Moonriver, Kava, and Conflux with over $125 million worth of cryptocurrencies being withdrawn from multiple wallets.

Multichain Temporarily Halts Services

In response to the situation, Multichain announced the temporary suspension of its services without specifying a return date. They advised users against utilizing the bridging service as all transactions would be stuck on the source chains until further notice.

Investigations into Unusual Asset Transfers

The exact cause for these abnormal asset transfers remains unclear at this time and investigations are underway to shed light on this perplexing situation. According to Fantom protocol CEO Michael Kong ,the funds sent to the alleged attacker’s wallet were not further moved which suggests that it is not a typical hack.

Conclusion

Circle and Tether have taken action by freezing more than $65 million in assets related to a suspected exploit of Multichian while investigations are still underway into what caused these unusual asset transfers.. In response, Multichan has temporarily halted its services leaving users uncertain about when they will be able to use them again safely