Breakdown of Multichain's Troubles

As decentralisation maxis, we weren't surprised by the recent developments surrounding Multichain. Let's dive into the sequence of events and the implications for the project and its users.

On May 21, Multichain CEO Zhaojun was taken into custody by Chinese police. The team lost access to the MPC node servers, which were actually running under Zhaojun's personal cloud server account. No team member can log in to these servers.

Zhaojun's computers, phones, hardware wallets, and mnemonic phrases were confiscated. All operational funds and investments were under Zhaojun's control. The team had to rely on limited access to non-MPC servers to continue project operations.

On May 30, the team informed the community about Zhaojun's disappearance and the technical issues they were facing. However, due to legal considerations, they refrained from disclosing unauthorized information about the case.

Zhaojun's family allowed the team engineers to access the home computer to fix technical issues with certain routers. The team continued to maintain the Multichain protocol, anticipating Zhaojun's imminent release.

Despite the challenges, the Multichain protocol continued to operate as designed. The team made efforts to sustain the system and resolve user issues, but they were unaware of the details of the case.

On July 7, user assets locked on MPC addresses were transferred to unknown addresses, with login information from an IP address in Kunming found on the cloud server platform. This raised concerns about the security of the funds.

On July 9, Zhaojun's sister transferred the remaining user assets to addresses she controlled. However, on July 13, she was also taken into custody, leaving the status of the preserved assets uncertain.

Given the lack of alternative sources of information and operational funds, the team had no choice but to cease operations. They will provide updates if there are any further developments.

This unfortunate incident highlights the risks associated with centralized crypto bridges. It's crucial to prioritize decentralization and security in the crypto ecosystem to avoid such situations in the future.