MultiChain Halts Operations, Details CEO's Disappearance And Fund Transfers

Just like a plot in a movie, MultiChain, a bridging platform for cryptocurrencies and NFTs across blockchains, announced that it is halting its operations and revealed the details of what transpired between May and July of this year after the company suffered from what is described as one of the biggest crypto hacks this year.

MultiChain has been experiencing several issues since May, after its CEO, known by the name Zhaojun, allegedly disappeared, leaving the team helpless and unable to access routers to which only its top executive had access.

Earlier this month, on-chain data revealed "abnormal transfers" of substantial amounts totaling $126 million in crypto assets from MutlChain's bridges, which were followed by another transfer worth $103 million Tuesday.

The official Twitter account of MultiChain made a lengthy post Friday detailing what happened between May and July.

The account confirmed that its CEO was indeed arrested by Chinese authorities from his home on May 21 and they had seized all of his electronic devices, including "computers, phones, hardware wallets, and mnemonic phrases." While the team contacted the MPC node operators, it learned that the operational access keys to MPC node servers had already been revoked.

MultiChain explained that since the MPC node servers run under Zhaojun's personal cloud server account, no one can log on to these servers.

"Due to the lack of information about the case, the team could only maintain project operations to the best of their abilities through the remaining access on some non-MPC servers that hadn't been revoked yet. Per the lawyer's suggestions, the team has chosen to cooperate as much as possible with the demands of Zhaojun's family and adhere to the requirements of local laws and regulations, refraining from disclosing unauthorized information about the case to the public," MultiChain said in a tweet.

Eventually, the family of the CEO was able to log into Zhaojun's cloud server via historical data on his home computer (which was apparently not included in the confiscated devices) but only allowed MultiChain engineers to physically access routers 2 and 5 to fix the issues.

MultiChain also explained that the abnormal transfer of funds, which were assets locked on MPC addresses, that happened on July 7 was made from an IP address in Kunming, based on the login information on the cloud server platform Zhaojun's sister found.

Interestingly, the movement of funds on July 9, which on-chain sleuths discovered, was made by the CEO's sister who allegedly transferred to EOA addresses 0x1eed63efba5f81d95bfe37d82c8e736b974f477b and 0x6b6314f4f07c974600d872182dcde092c480e57b, which she controls.

Now, MultiChain claims that Chinese authorities also arrested Zhaojun's sister Thursday, leaving them with no clue as to the status of the company's assets and no other choice but to disclose the information to the users.

"Due to the lack of alternative sources of information and corresponding operational funds, the team is forced to cease operations. If there are any further notifications and developments, the team will update the community accordingly," MultiChain said in another tweet.

"The Multichain team does not have the access to Domain Account to redirect or bring down the frontend http://multichain.org. Please help amplify and ask users not to use the Multichain service anymore," the team said in a tweet.

MultiChain also assured to refund users and asked that they "revoke app approvals to Multichain immediately."