Multichain (MULTI), a cross-chain bridge protocol, has announced the closure of its operations.
Multichain (MULTI) Shuts Down Operations
Multichain (MULTI), a cross-chain bridge protocol, has announced the closure of its operations.
This is due to a shortage of funding and Zhaojun's arrest by Chinese officials. Users claimed that pending transfers were getting stuck, which caused problems for the protocol.
There were rumors that Zhaojun and other Multichain executives had been detained. Zhaojun was confirmed to be absent and to have had exclusive access to the servers that were causing the delays by the protocol.
Zhaojun's family gave Multichain developers access to his desktop on June 4 so they could address technical problems. The protocol partially resumed operations the following day. However, a month later, Zhaojun's sister gained access to client funds restricted to multi-party computation (MPC) wallets and moved at least $200 million worth of cryptocurrency into wallets under her control.
At first, it was assumed that the transactions were the work of exploiters. Zhaojun's family alerted the team on July 13 that his sister had also been arrested by Chinese authorities, making it unclear what would happen to the assets that had been secured.
Zhaojun's devices, crypto hardware wallets, and mnemonic phrases have all been seized by the authorities, who have also impounded all of the team's funds and forced them to cease operations.
