Multichain Protocol Loses Over $3 Million in Multiple Hacks

Hacks are something everybody has to consider when entering the crypto world, especially when it comes to smart contracts.

The cross-chain protocol announced last Monday to users that six tokens had a critical vulnerability, including WETH, PERI, OMT, WBNB, MATIC, and AVAX. The team commented that users need to revoke the approval of any of the six tokens. The next day over $1 million was stolen.

A day later, on January 19, Tal Be’ery, the co-founder of the ZenGo wallet announced on his Twitter account that the Multichain losses rose to $3 million as mentioned below.

The @MultichainOrg hack is far from being over.
Over the last hours more than additional $1M stolen, rising the total stolen amount to $3M.
One victim lost $960K!https://t.co/fYhYxUojB8 pic.twitter.com/Gvh5hB6t6s

— Tal Be'ery (@TalBeerySec) January 19, 2022

In the crypto world, the hacks haven’t disappeared, last month the Centralized exchange BitMart lost around $200 million worth of crypto, and also the Celsius Network about $54 million.

What Is Multichain?

Multichain, formerly known as Anyswap, is a cross-chain router protocol, founded in July 2020. It allows users to swap tokens between different blockchains using a bridge.

The protocol supports 30 different chains and over 1,389 different tokens according to their official website. It has $9.43 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL) and over $4 billion in volume in the last seven days.

The cross-chain protocol uses a governance token called MULTI, and it allows holders of the token to vote and participate in the decisions of Multichain’s ecosystem.

Is the Hack Situation Under Control?

At the moment one whitehat hacker returned 259 ETH as Multichain’s official Twitter account commented as you can see below:

📢Update
According to the tracking data, one whitehat hacker has returned 259 ETH (https://t.co/BvTwOQTsE1). At this moment, a total of 602.693538 ETH is exploited. We are trying to get more funds back.

— Multichain (Previously Anyswap) (@MultichainOrg) January 20, 2022

The Multichain team has warned over and over about the six compromised tokens on their protocol. Also, the team has been taking actions along the way like monitoring and reaching the affected users, making announcements, updates, and alert banners on social channels.

It appears Multichain is a bit relieved due to the recovery of some of its funds, but are all the funds going to be recovered? Let’s hope so.