Cross-Chain Bridge Stargate's Volume Soars as Airdrop Hunters Set Sights on LayerZero Token
At least four wallets from bitcoin’s early days have seen signs of activity in the past few days, sparking conversations on Crypto Twitter about the possible reasons behind the activity. The investors are known as 'whales' because they hold large amounts of tokens in their digital wallets and can influence the price or sentiment around a token. One such wallet, which was last active in 2012, moved more than 400 bitcoins ($11 million) over the weekend. Another whale wallet moved 279 bitcoins earlier in April after over 10 years of inactivity. The identities of these whales are unknown, and none of them has said publicly why they are making the moves. The silence has spurred speculation on Crypto Twitter, with possible reasons ranging from developers of the dark web site Silk Road getting access to the whales' wallets to insiders in the know moving tokens ahead of bad news. Some have speculated that the holders' wallet passwords have been cracked. Old wallets have repeatedly been the target for hackers and online thieves, and earlier this month, a massive 'wallet draining operation' affected whales and early holders of ether. The movement of these whales comes on the back of several other whales moving large quantities of bitcoin and ether in the past few weeks.Investors in the Hector Network, a stablecoin project, are demanding that the group's leaders kill it faster after the project suffered major losses from the Multichain bridge's collapse. The community is angry over the timeline for liquidation, which could take six to twelve months, and the fact that the project's remaining $16 million treasury may be whittled away by legal fees and other expenses. The situation highlights the messiness of operating a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and the complexity of unwinding such a project. The article also mentions that the DAO never approved the creation of a corporation, and that the project's leaders plan to proceed with liquidation in the British Virgin Islands. The community is crying foul over the lack of transparency and the fact that they were bamboozled. The article quotes a former employee of the group and a prominent figure in the Hector community, who say that the project's ambitions were too broad and that infighting and delays drained the treasury. The article also mentions that investors had identified Hector as a risk-free value trade and that some had already been pushing for a rage quit before the announcement of liquidation.Cross-chain router protocol Multichain has been exploited for nearly $130 million after an attacker siphoned capital out of numerous token bridges. The lockup assets on the Multichain MPC address have been moved to an unknown address abnormally, with the team not sure what happened and currently investigating. It is recommended that all users suspend the use of Multichain services and revoke all contract approvals related to Multichain. The unexpected outflows stripped Multichain’s Fantom bridge of nearly its entire holdings in wBTC, USDC, USDT and a handful of altcoins, worth over $130 million. On-chain sleuths described the activity as highly unusual, with Fantom Foundation CEO Michael Kong looking into it. Multichain has been under pressure for over a month due to failing tech and its AWOL CEO. The trio of unexplained outflows from Multichain’s Fantom, Moonriver and Dogecoin bridge contracts sparked fears on crypto Twitter that a hack could be afoot. Binance CEO Changpeng 'CZ' Zhao said that the exploit does not affect users on Binance itself, with assets swapped out and deposits closed a while back. Assets transferred out of the Multichain Fantom bridge include at least $20 million of altcoins going to 0x9d57, with other transfers seeing outbound moves of 1,023 wBTC ($30.9 million), 7,214 wETH ($13.6 million), and $57 million USDC between two separate addresses. Multichain’s Moonriver bridge contract has seen $6.8 million in token outflows with nearly all its wBTC, USDT, USDC and DAI going to 0x48BeAD. An address identified as Mulitchain’s Dogecoin bridge has seen over $600,000 in outflows of USDC. UPDATE (July 7, 2023, 09:17 UTC): Updates headline and adds context on the exploit throughout.