Fantom Foundation, Justin Sun and HashKey take action amid Multichain 'force majeure'

Three large crypto entities have taken action in response to the delays and concerns around the cross-chain protocol Multichain.

The Fantom Foundation withdrew $2.4 million in liquidity of the protocol's native MULTI tokens on decentralized exchange SushiSwap, as noted by on-chain analysts Lookonchain, making the tokens available to be sold. Similarly, Chinese crypto investment firm HashKey Group moved $250,000 to crypto exchange Gate.io, as noted by crypto analysts Arkham Intelligence.

Beyond the tokens, Tron founder Justin Sun withdrew 470,000 of the stablecoin USDD from the protocol itself, as highlighted by Lookonchain.

Multichain has been hit by concerns after users have reported delayed transactions over the last few days. For its part, the protocol maintains that the delays are being caused by an upgrade and that only one more router is left to be upgraded.

Multichain responds

"Well bridge/swap works as usual, only Router2 routing is pending upgrade [at the moment]," said Multichain's pseudonymous VP of strategic partnerships, who goes by Mog, adding that "99% of other routings/ token bridges work as intended."

In the meantime, the token's price remains down at $5.21, having declined 26% in the last 24 hours.

"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," Multichain said in an update on its Twitter account. "After service is restored, pending transactions will be credited automatically." 

Multichain said it would compensate users affected "during this process," with a formal plan to be announced in the future. 

(Updates with comment from Multichain in 7th paragraph.)