• Circle and Tether have frozen $65 million in assets tied to a suspected exploit of Multichain.
• Multiple ecosystems, including Dogechain, Moonriver, Kava, and Conflux were affected by the abnormal asset transfers.
• Multichain has suspended its services in response to the incident.

Circle and Tether Freeze $65M in Assets

Stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether have frozen more than $65 million in assets related 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. 0xScope identified three addresses that received a substantial amount of $63.2 million in USD Coin from Multichain, and these addresses have now been frozen. Additionally, two addresses labeled as “Multichain Suspicious Addresses” on Etherscan had over $2.5 million in Tether frozen.

Multiple Ecosystems Affected

The incident on July 6 involved the withdrawal of over $125 million worth of cryptocurrencies from multiple wallets, impacting various ecosystems including Multichain’s Fantom bridge, Dogechain, Moonriver, Kava, and Conflux. The exact cause of these abnormal asset transfers remains unclear at this time.

Multichain Suspends Services

In response to the incident, Multichain took to Twitter to announce the temporary suspension of its services without specifying a return date. They advised users against utilizing their bridging service until further notice as all transactions would be stuck on the source chains while investigations are ongoing into this perplexing situation.

Suspected Exploit Causes Uncertainty

At this time it is unclear what caused these abnormal asset transfers or who is responsible for them but Fantom protocol CEO Michael Kong suggested that it does not appear to be a typical hack as none of the funds sent to the alleged attacker’s wallet were further moved or spent yet.

Impact Remains Unclear

It remains uncertain how much impact this attack will have on these various ecosystems but both Circle and Tether have taken action by freezing assets related to this suspected exploit which may help lessen any potential losses incurred as a result of this attack while investigations continue into what happened exactly and who is responsible for it if anyone is at all..