DEFIREGULATION

Multichain confirms: Founder and sister taken away by police, operational funds and private keys whereabouts unknown

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Multichain confirms: Founder and sister taken away by police, operational funds and private keys whereabouts unknown

The Multichain cross-chain bridge recently reported that assets were transferred without authorization, potentially hacked for $126 million USD, with the exact cause remaining undisclosed by the official team. Rumors circulating in the community suggested that the team was taken away by Chinese authorities, which has now been confirmed.

Looking back at the incident: The cross-chain protocol Multichain potentially hacked for $126 million USD! Reasons being investigated, official statement: Service discontinued, authorization revoked.

MultiChain Bridge Multichain CEO Taken Away by Chinese Police

MultiChain released a statement indicating that on May 21, 2023, MultiChain CEO Jun Zhao was taken away by the authorities from his home in China and has since lost contact with the global MultiChain team. The team contacted the MPC node operators and found that their access keys to the MPC node servers had been revoked.

Additionally, these MPC node servers, like other regular servers, are actually running under Jun Zhao's personal cloud server account. No one on the team has access to Jun Zhao's personal cloud server account, so no one can log into these MPC servers.

MultiChain Bridge Multichain MPC Nodes Highly Decentralized, Funds in Jeopardy?

MultiChain stated that the team later managed to contact Jun Zhao's family, who informed them that Jun Zhao's computer, phone, hardware wallets, and mnemonic phrases had all been confiscated by the Chinese authorities. Since the inception of the product, all operational funds and investor investments have been under Jun Zhao's control. This also means that all the team's funds and server access permissions are in the hands of Jun Zhao and the authorities.

Due to the lack of information on the case, the team can only maintain product operations as best as possible through remaining access permissions on some non-MPC servers that have not been revoked. Following legal advice, the team chooses to comply with Jun Zhao's family's requests, adhere to Chinese legal requirements, and refrain from disclosing unauthorized case information to the public.

MultiChain Bridge Multichain Details Events

On May 30, 2023, to be accountable to the community, the team disclosed the news of Jun Zhao's disappearance and informed the community of the technical issues currently faced.

On June 4, 2023, Jun Zhao's family successfully used his home computer's browsing history to log into the cloud server platform. However, Jun Zhao's family only allowed the team's engineers to use their home computer to address technical issues with Router2 and Router5. During this time, Jun Zhao's family and lawyers communicated with the authorities. The team is unaware of the details of the case but received notifications that Jun Zhao would soon be released, requesting the team to continue maintaining the system and await further updates. The MultiChain protocol continues to operate as designed. The team is making every effort to maintain the operation of the MultiChain protocol with limited resources and resolve user problems as much as possible.

On July 7, 2023, user assets on the MPC address were abnormally transferred to an unknown address. According to information provided by Jun Zhao's sister, login information from Kunming IP addresses was found on the cloud server platform and a series of fund transfers from the MPC address took place.

On July 9, 2023, Jun Zhao's sister transferred the remaining user assets in the router pool and subsequently informed the team and other project parties of this asset preservation operation. These funds were transferred to an EOA address controlled by Jun Zhao's sister:

0x1eed63efba5f81d95bfe37d82c8e736b974f477b
0x6b6314f4f07c974600d872182dcde092c480e57b

On July 13, 2023, based on information provided by Jun Zhao's family, his sister was detained by the authorities. Currently, Jun Zhao's sister is also unreachable. The status of the assets she held is uncertain, so the team deems it necessary to inform the community of all known circumstances.

MultiChain Founder's Sister Also Taken Away, Team Forced to Halt Operations

MultiChain stated that due to the lack of alternative sources of information and corresponding operational funds, the team was forced to cease operations. If there are any further notifications and developments, the team will update the community accordingly.

MultiChain Team Unable to Control Website: Users Advised Not to Use Anymore

The MultiChain team mentioned that they were unable to access the domain account to redirect it to another URL or take down the front-end webpage of http://multichain.org. They urge users not to use the services of that website anymore.

Fantom Foundation Expresses Disappointment, Contacts Frozen with at Least 62 Million USD

MultiChain is one of the early cross-chain infrastructures supported by Fantom Foundation. Following the announcement, Fantom Foundation expressed disappointment and has contacted multiple stablecoin issuers to assist in freezing over 62 million USD worth of USDC and 2 million USD worth of USDT.