In a tale that seems ripped from the pages of a suspense thriller, the Multichain project shared a chilling narrative involving Chinese police, asset seizure and operational shutdowns. The CEO of Multichain, known as Zhaojun, was taken into custody by Chinese authorities on May 21, 2023, setting off a chain of events that have rattled the project to its core.
Zhaojun was reportedly arrested at his residence, subsequently losing all contact with his team at Multichain. In a startling revelation, it was found that the access keys to the MPC node servers were revoked, effectively severing the global team's control over operations. These servers were running under Zhaojun's personal cloud server account, rendering the team helpless without access.
The situation was further complicated when the authorities confiscated all of Zhaojun's digital assets, including computers, phones, hardware wallets and mnemonic phrases. As a result, control over all operational funds and investor capital fell into the hands of the police.
The Multichain team made efforts to keep the project running and withheld details about the case to comply with local laws and regulations. On May 30, they informed the community about Zhaojun's disappearance and the technical challenges that arose.
Over the next few days, Zhaojun's family was able to log into the cloud server platform, but they allowed only limited access to Multichain's engineers. Then, on July 7, user assets locked on the MPC addresses were mysteriously transferred to unknown addresses.
Zhaojun's sister managed to transfer the remaining assets in the router pool for preservation on July 9. However, in a shocking twist, she was also taken into custody on July 13, leaving the status of the preserved assets in limbo.
With no additional sources of information or operational funds, the Multichain team announced the suspension of its operations on July 13. The team advised users not to use the Multichain service anymore.
Dan Burgin
Yuri Molchan
Denys Serhiichuk
