Recap

Multichain, formerly known as Anyswap, became popular as the bridge with the lowest fees. It had a TVL of over $1.5B

Multichain experienced a major hack of $8M in 2021, but this was only a precursor to more severe incidents that followed

May 2023

In May 2023, the first rumors surfaced that one of the founders of Multichain, named Zhaojun, had been arrested in China

A big blow for Fantom as 35% of its assets were stored in Multichain, including 80% of its total stablecoin market cap

May 2023

Shortly before the arrest team wallets moving ~$3M of $MULTI, Multichains governance Token to Gate. io which have also spooked some investors, with $MULTI price falling 26.5% in 24h

May 2023

Zhaojun was indeed arrested on May 21

The police confiscated all his devices, including computers, phones, hardware wallets, and recovery phrases

Since then, the team has been unable to contact him or access his personal cloud server, which contained the MPC node for managing the protocol

June 2023

The Multichain team contacted the family of Zhaojun which could log into the cloud server platform using the historical information on his home computer

Unfortunately the family only gave limited physical access to the home computer to fix some urgent bugs

July 2023

On July 7, Zhaojun’s sister discovered login details originating from an IP address in Kunming, a city located in China’s Yunnan province

It looked like that Zhaojun's sister made some unauthorized transfers (Millions) as the funds were transferred to EOA addresses controlled by herself

A few days later on July 13 she also got arrested and is out of contact since then

July 2023

Just one day after, on July 14, the Multichain team announced they would shut down

It remains unclear whether this was an insider job or if they were victims of China's strict crypto law

Nevertheless, the story continues...

August 2023

Users lost millions of dollars still stuck in the Multichain protocol

A group of victims quickly started their own investigation and discovered that the founder of Multichain most likely used a fake ID or another pseudonym

It was later revealed that Zhaojun registered the company under his parents' names. A third party named Xu Ruduo, likely a co-founder, has been unreachable

November 2023

Despite the announced shutdown Multichain resumed operations for the first time in nearly four months.

What should be a new beginning ended in another tragedy Someone extracted $1 million in a simple cross-chain arbitrage trade

A few minutes after the $1 million theft, the protocol ceased operating yet again, what leaves a weird feeling.

January 2024

Out of nowhere, Zhaojun's Telegram account displayed "last seen recently."

It's unclear whether it's truly Zhaojun or if the Chinese authorities are ensuring chats are saved and the account doesn't get auto-deleted.

July 2024

On July 8, Singapore’s High Court ruled that Multichain owes the Fantom Foundation, which manages the Fantom blockchain, $2.2M

While Zhaojun seems to be still in prison, most Multichain Core Team memebers are released...

What happened to Zhaojun?

No one really knows, but he is probably still in prison in China, and likely not for a short time

We don't have any confirmation, but it definitely appears to be the biggest insider job in crypto history

TL;DR hackers love bridges

In 2022 alone, over $2 billion was stolen from cross-chain bridges, including $320 million from Wormhole

@debridge might be the only bridge to never experience a security incident, with a 0-TVL design where user security is prioritized above all else.

With deBridge's mechanism not even the team can rug users as they receive funds on dest chain before the collateral is unlocked for private market makers.

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