The silence coming from the Multichainโs leadership team is causing further uncertainty for users of the cross-chain protocol with $1.5 billion in total value locked.
The protocol has had 5 days of stuck transactions and it still has numerous cross-chain bridge pathways โ Kava, zkSync, Polygon zkEVM โ that are not isย still online. The 1st purported cause was that this was owingย to an upgrade that was getting fixed, but the justification was changed yesterday to an ambigious โforce majeure.โ
This comes alongside unverified speculation onย Twitterย platform that the core leadership team may have been arrested in China.
Multichain co- founder DJ Qian, who no longer works with the project, said onย Twitterย platform today that he requested theย present Multichain CEO Zhaojun and its founding partner Xu Guochang to see if they could provide any technical help. Andย once requested what the situation is with Zhaojun, he replied that heโs โnot available yet.โ
In a group Telegram message with the Multichain team, Multichainโs VP of Strategic Partnerships, who goes by Mog, replied that he didnโt know whether the leadership team had been detained by Chinese authorities. Zhaojun did not reply in the group, nor to a direct message through the same app.
On the projectโs Discord server and Telegram groups, there have similarly been no updates, with community members informed to wait for further updates.
Meanwhile,ย the price of Multichainโs native cryptoย token MULTI has continued to slide and is now down to $4.98, having declined 23 percent in the last 24 hours.
Projects reacting to the silence
Conflux Network is the latest entity to respond to the situation. It has suspended Multichainโs co-mint privileges as a precaution. This prevents Multichain from minting cryptoย tokens on its blockchainย tech. It alsoย mentionedย that it willย assist to work with users if there are any losses that arise.
Yesterday, cryptocurrency financing company HashKey Group moved $250,000 to cryptocurrency exchange Gate.io and Tron founder Justin Sun withdrew 470,000 of the USDD cryptoย stablecoin from the protocol itself.
The Fantom Foundation likewise withdrew $2.4 Million in liquidity of the protocolโs native MULTI cryptoย tokens on decentralized exchange SushiSwap. Reportsย by data from The Block Research, 38 percent of the total-value locked on the Fantom blockchainย tech is held within Multichain.
