Multichain, one of the largest cross-bridge protocols, announced earlier today that it had suspended all operations. The news came more than a month after the Multichain team told its community that it was unable to locate Zhaojun, the platform’s beleaguered Chief Executive Officer.
The Multichain team took to Twitter earlier today to provide an update regarding the protocol’s operations:
According to the update, the CEO was detained by the Chinese police from his home. He had since been out of contact with the Multichain team. When contacted by the team, the multi-party computation (MPC) node operators revealed that their operational access keys to the servers had been revoked. These node servers were reportedly running under the CEO’s personal cloud server account.
The Multichain team stated that it had tried to gain access to Zhaojun’s personal cloud server. However, the CEO’s family informed the team that all of his computers, phones, hardware wallets, and even mnemonic phrases had been confiscated by law enforcement agencies. It was unclear why the police had detained Zhaojun.
The confiscation of CEO Zhaojun’s accounts left the Multichain team with no access to the protocol’s funds. The team told its followers on Twitter that it tried to the best of its ability, to keep the project running and manage its operations. On June 4, 2023, the team was able to log into Zhaojun’s server account but was only allowed to fix technical issues related to the cross-chain protocol.
Zhaojun’s family did not disclose details about the case, but asked the team to maintain the protocol and await the CEO’s release. The team stated that it tried to maintain operations despite having limited resources to do so. However, Zhaojun’s sister was arrested by the Chinese police on July 13. The arrest came just four days after she transferred the assets of Multichain’s users into the router protocol and informed the team about the same.
The Multichain team took into consideration the lack of information as well as operational funds and decided to cease the protocol’s operations. The latest development led to an 18% decline in the protocol’s native token MULTI.
