Multichain CEO gone missing, services are suspended

Cross-chain protocol services are suspended for Kekchain, Public Mint, DynoChain, Redlight Chain, Dexit, Ekta, HPB, Onus, Omax, Findora, and Planq.

The Multichain team announced on Twitter on May 31 that it doesn’t know the whereabouts of its CEO, Zhaojun, after experiencing technical problems with the protocol since last week. Contacting him is vital at this stage because without him they cannot reach the “necessary server access for maintenance.”

The issues with Multichain began last week when transactions were delayed without a clear explanation from the team. This affected the price with a massive sell-off of the token, which dropped 30% in 24 hours.

Since the problem wasn’t fixed and the solution wasn’t brought about, rumors began to circulate on Twitter about an arrest of the Multichain team in China. According to them, the police seized $1.5 billion in smart contract funds and part of the team transferred 494200 MULTI tokens to Gate.io.

Cointelegraph reached out to Multicoin to confirm the rumors, but received no response. So far, the rumors remain unconfirmed.

Blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence has confirmed that a large sum of MULTI tokens is being transferred to Gate.io by publishing data on Twitter.

After numerous deposits of MULTI and Fantom to Gate.io, some people on Twitter expressed fears that the exchange could be affected by the problems of Multichain.

Gate.io denied the rumors, stating:

We would like to clarify that our operations are running healthily, withdrawals are functioning properly, and there are no issues with our operations or withdrawals as rumored.

Amid Multichain issues without clarification, Binance temporarily halted deposits for 10 bridged tokens on BNB Smart Chain, Fantom, Ethereum and Avalanche on May 25. The unexplained inactivity also led the Fantom Foundation to withdraw 449,740 MULTI tokens ($2.4 million) from the liquidity on the decentralized exchange SushiSwap.