The native token powering the cross-chain bridge Multichain plummeted today after users began sharing that some of their transactions had been stuck since Sunday.
Though the team assured that funds are safe and they’re working to solve the issue.
Multichain—previously known as Anyswap—is a decentralized cross-chain protocol that facilitates the exchange of different cryptocurrencies across multiple blockchain networks.
By leveraging smart contracts and decentralized liquidity pools, Multichain lets networks like Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, and others interact with each other.
MULTI was down 29.4% in the last 24 hours, last trading at $5.02, per CoinGecko data.
The issue began on Sunday when Multichain’s Telegram group was flooded with user complaints of pending transfers.
One user message read, "looks like I am not alone," adding that their Arbitrum to zkSync transfer was still "confirming" for hours.
David Who, a Multichain community manager, wrote in a Telegram message on the same day that the "bridging service on one of our routers was not well functional [sic]."
A Multichain router is an intermediate automated function that determines the appropriate path or route for the asset transfer based on the liquidity pools.
The team has confirmed that one of the "routers" on the bridge was affected. They're upgrading the RPC-backend node to resolve the issue.
An RPC node acts as the gateway or interface between the Ethereum network and Web2. It provides a set of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allow clients to interact with the Ethereum network.
According to the list of addresses shared with Decrypt via Telegram, the affected pools have 3,975 ETH, worth around $7 million in zkSync and over $322,000 in USDC. Polygon zkEVM USDC pool has around $1,330 worth of USDC in it.
Kava is a Cosmos-based Layer-1 blockchain focused on DeFi applications like stablecoin minting.
zkSync and Polygon zkEVM are Ethereum layer-2 solutions based on zero-knowledge proof technology. These two are relatively new blockchains launched in March 2023.
Who added that "at this stage, we can't be sure when it will be fully fixed. However, our user's funds are safe," and pending transactions would "pass through automatically and instantly" after resolution.
On May 22, a moderator notified the community about temporarily suspending "some bridges which were causing pending transactions to avoid new lagging transactions."
The following day another community manager Sylvia wrote that "recovery is expected within the next 24 hours."
72 hours since the first report of pending transactions came out, transfers continued to be delayed.