The price of Fantom (FTM) has had a dip in recent days. This decline appears to have worsened over the past 24 hours due to the spread of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) among investors.
CoinGecko Data shows that the FTM token has lost 10.3% of its value in the last 24 hours. This drop in price is linked to the movement of crypto assets from Multichain’s Fantom bridge to separate wallet addresses.
FTM Price Drops Amid “Abnormal” Multichain Bridge Shootings
There has been some uncertainty surrounding the Fantom network lately due to the “abnormal” movement of funds from its Multichain Bridge – a cross-chain bridging protocol that allows the transfer of assets between different blockchains.
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On July 6, more than $100 million in crypto assets were withdrawn from Multichain’s Fantom bridge. On-chain data reveals that 7,214 Wrapped Ether (WETH) tokens (worth $13.6 million), 1,024 Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) (equivalent to $31 million), and $58 million worth of US Dollar Coin (USDC) were removed from the multichain bridge of the network.
Furthermore, the movement of funds from bridges of other blockchains has also been reported. Notably, Dogechain saw the withdrawal of over $600,000 in USDC from its bridge. In addition, $4.8 million in USDC and $1 million in Tether (USDT) were withdrawn from Multichain’s Moonriver bridge.
Although Multichain works on other blockchains, it is clear that the Fantom blockchain mainly relies on the cross-chain protocol. According to trading company Thanefieldnearly 40% of the crypto assets on Fantom (excluding the native FTM tokens) reached the blockchain through Multichain’s bridges.
The price of FTM has been falling since this on-chain business came to the fore. At the time of writing, the FTM token is trading at $0.269819, having lost more than 10% of its value in the past day.
FTMUSD trading at $0.2692 | Source: FTMUSD chart from TradingView
Fantom spreads calm amid fears of exploitation
In the early hours of today, Multichain took to Twitter to address these “abnormal” recordings and begged its users to suspend use of its platform. The protocol does not claim to know what happened, but assured its users that an investigation is underway.
The locked assets on the Multichain MPC address have been abnormally moved to an unknown address.
The team is unsure what happened and is currently investigating.It is recommended that all users suspend the use of Multichain services and revoke all contract approvals…
— Multichain (formerly Anyswap) (@MultichainOrg) July 6, 2023
This announcement comes after speculation of exploitation by the general online population. Specifically, security firm PeckShield tagged the Multichain team in a tweet, asking the protocol to look at Fantom bridge transactions. Five hours after his first tweet, the security company came said “It looks like the hack has been confirmed.”
It is worth noting that Multichain has been experiencing unspecified technical issues in recent months. In May, the team of the protocol announced that contact with its CEO was lost and was experiencing multiple issues due to unforeseen circumstances.
That said, Fantom released a number of statements on Twitter to address the issue. “We are aware of a situation that is happening on the Multichain bridge. We are actively evaluating the circumstances and will provide an update as soon as we have more to report,” the first tweet read.
In another tweet, the network assured users that the FTM token was never issued or managed by Multichain. This means that WFTM (Wrapped Fantom), FTM ERC-20 and FTM on the Opera Mainnet are not affected.
Featured image of Fantom, chart from TradingView