Binance Suspends Multichain Token Deposits Amid Transaction Delays

Binance has temporarily suspended transfers of wrapped tokens from the Multichain bridge amid days-long delays in transaction times.

This afternoon, the world’s largest exchange suspended deposits of ten tokens bridged to Binance Chain, Ethereum, Avalanche, and Fantom.

Multichain has deposits worth $1.52 billion locked on it for liquidity provisions, per DeFiLlama. This week’s events caused a slight dip in its total value locked (TVL) from $1.6 billion to $1.52 billion.

“We'll be temporarily suspending deposits for the following bridged tokens-network while we await clarity from the Multichain team,” wrote Binance.

We'll be temporarily suspending deposits for the following bridged tokens-network while we await clarity from the Multichain team.

POLS-BSC
ACH-BSC
BIFI-FTM
SUPER-BSC
AVA-ETH
SPELL-AVAXC
ALPACA-FTM
FTM-ETH
FARM-BSC
DEXE-BSC

Deposits of the above assets on other networks are…

— Binance (@binance) May 25, 2023

A Multichain wrapped asset is locked up in a Multi-Party Computation (MPC) node on the source chain, and then a corresponding wrapped asset is minted on the target chain. An MPC node is a digital gateway controlled by specific wallets whose private key is divided, encrypted, and shared between multiple parties.

Users reported issues related to Multichain’s zkSync, Kava, and Polygon zkEVM bridge, where transfers to these networks have been stuck since May 21.

The Multichain team told users via a Twitter post yesterday that “pending transactions will be credited automatically” and that they are forming a compensation plan for affected users.

While most of the cross-chain routes of Multichain protocol are functioning well, some of the cross-chain routes are unavailable due to force majeure, and the time for service to resume is unknown. After service is restored, pending transactions will be credited automatically.…

— Multichain (Previously Anyswap) (@MultichainOrg) May 24, 2023

Multichain co-founder DJ Qian said this morning that he was also in talks with the bridging project’s CEO to resolve the issue