Binance has announced that it will suspend support for the deposit and withdrawal of tokens minted through the Multichain cross-chain bridge from July 7 until further notice. The move comes amid security concerns and operational issues with the bridging platform.
Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has decided to stop supporting the deposit and withdrawal of tokens created through the Multichain cross-chain bridge, a platform that allows users to transfer tokens across different blockchains.
The suspension will take effect from 08:00 on July 7 and will affect deposits for pairs such as POLS-BSC, ACH-BSC, BIFI-FTM, SUPER-BSC, AVA-ETH, SPELL-AVAXC, ALPACA-FTM, FTM-ETH, FARM-BSC and DEXE-BSC.
This is Binance’s latest move towards the troubled Multichain cross-chain bridge. Previously, Binance had temporarily suspended the top-up of tokens via the project-linked bridge following an incident that raised doubts about the security and legitimacy of the platform.
The incident occurred on May 24, when the Twitter social network stirred up information that the authorities had arrested the Multichain team in China.
Simultaneously, many on-chain signs indicated suspicious activity involving the MULTI token, the native token of Multichain. Multichain confirmed that some of the project’s cross-chain remittance gateways were not working due to “force majeure reasons,” with unknown recovery time.
Multichain pledged to compensate affected users fully but did not disclose any further information on the compensation plan. Data tracking site Lookonchain detected moves to transfer large amounts of MULTI tokens to the Gate exchange. This increased the concerns of the bridge’s users.
According to an update, some cross-chain bridges of the Multichain protocol have been restored and are now operational as of June 5.
Tung Dinh, Vice President of Multichain, confirmed the restoration of the Multichain router2 router, showing that the core component of the bridge is back to normal.
About Multichain
Multichain is an open-source, cross-chain router protocol (CRP) that lets users bridge tokens across blockchains. The project was founded in July 2020 and has since rebranded from Anyswap.
Binance also provided $350,000 to Multichain as part of its accelerator program, and Binance Labs led a $60 million investment round.
Multichain supports over 74 chains, including BNB Smart Chain, Fantom, and Harmony.
Users can transfer their assets seamlessly across blockchains through its Cross-Chain Bridges and Cross-Chain Routers. Multichain also has a governance token, MULTI, to let holders participate in the project’s upcoming governance mechanism.
Multichain uses two methods to bridge tokens. First, it uses smart contracts to secure tokens on one blockchain and mint wrapped tokens on another.
When this isn’t practicable, it uses a network of liquidity pools across chains to trade bridged tokens. Usually, all this can be done in under 30 minutes without slippage.
Multichain also offers a similar bridging service for NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens). Projects that wish to bridge their tokens on new blockchains can collaborate with Multichain to do so.
This service is free and can be completed in less than a week.
To facilitate all this work, Multichain has a network of Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMPC) nodes run by various parties.