A wallet address turned nearly 1.9 million Fantom (FTM) worth $280,000 into $1.9 million within hours of taking advantage of the temporary opening of a long-frozen multi-chain bridge, sparking speculation in the crypto community about the inner workings.
The multi-chain bridge has been frozen since it was exploited in July 2023, opening briefly and closing again on November 1. Wallets took advantage of the temporarily open bridges and made millions of dollars in profits.
Looks like someone was able to get from @MultichainOrg Within the last ~3 hours, even though it should have been frozen
Back 1.2MM $FTM Start with Binance @FantomFDN
Trade multi-chain WBTC/ETH/USDT
Bridge and deposit back to Binance pic.twitter.com/AbUJVQBmds— devops199fan ⌐◨-◨ (@devops199fan) November 1, 2023
Some decoupled assets, such as Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC), cost less on the Fantom network than their original counterparts on the Ethereum network. The wallet took advantage of the temporary opening to exchange FTM tokens for decoupled assets on the Fantom network and transfer them to the Ethereum network, regaining their total value.
The wallet address starting from 0x4372 first withdrew 1.9 million FTM tokens from Binance and exchanged them for Bitcoin (BTC) on the Fantom network, then used BTC to cross-chain to Ethereum through a multi-chain bridge, and 28.4 wBTC ($977,000), 357 Ethereum (ETH) ($642,000) and 298,000 Tether (USDT) were received.
The wallet address later bridged the assets and transferred them to Binance. However, in addition to problematic wallet addresses, the crypto community is also concerned about “multi-chain executors.”
Earlier this year, the multi-chain Fantom bridge was leveraged for more than $126 million; at the time, a number of ERC-20 assets — 7,214 Wrapped Ether (wETH) tokens worth $13.6 million, $31 million worth of 1,024 wBTC and $58 million worth of USD Coin (USDC) — depleted.
related: Poly Network urges users to exit after vulnerability affects 57 crypto assets
There are a lot of them on X (formerly Twitter) question The timing of the transaction, claims it was insider trading as the wallet was the only beneficiary of the bridge being open. One user wrote that Multichain has been closed for over 120 days and is temporarily open to only perform these specific transactions that are beneficial to the owner.
That’s it.
This is not possible due to a multi-chain crash and the bridge is closed
Miraculously, today the bridge reopened, so this person was able to buy BTC cheaply on Fantom and resell it on eth.
— CryptoDinduz (@CryptoDinduz) November 1, 2023
Web3 data analytics firm 0xScope told Cointelegraph that there is currently no concrete evidence that the trader had an inside job.
“While checking Multichain, we found that there are still some chains still running, such as KCC, Moonriver and Moonbeam. It is likely that the team behind Multichain is trying to restart their operations.”
As of press time, there has been no official statement from Fantom Network or Multichain
Magazine: Should we ban ransomware payments?It’s an attractive but dangerous idea
Svlook
