Deposits For 10 Bridged Coins Halted On Binance As Multichain Concerns Escalate

Summary:

• Binance suspended deposits for 10 bridged crypto coins pending an update from the Multichain team.
• The Binance deposits for these coins are only affected on four blockchains – Avalanche, BNB Chain, Ethereum, and Fantom networks.
• The temporary deposit suspension on Binance follows growing concerns about the Multichain protocol and unverified rumors about the teams’ arrest in China

Major crypto exchange Binance suspended deposits for 10 bridged crypto coins pending an update from the Multichain team.

The bridged tokens include pairs like AVA-ETH, ALPACA-FTM, FTM-ETH, and ACH-BSC to name a few. These 10 affected crypto coin deposits are spread across four different blockchain networks – Avalanche, BNB Chain, Ethereum, and Fantom.

The temporary halt on deposits will remain until Binance receives “clarity from the Multichain team”, an update from the crypto exchange said on Thursday. Binance clarified that users will be able to deposit these assets on other networks and the exchange.

Multichain’s “force majeure”

Today’s update is the latest development in an ongoing saga with Multichain. The protocol which allows users to move assets across multiple chains by acting as a bridge, suffered technical issues according to the team.

Several transactions are now jammed on the protocol on bridges linked to chains like Polygon zkEVM and zkSync. The team later claimed “force majeure” as the problem amid rising concerns about Multichain’s $1.5 billion TVL protocol.

These concerns turned up a notch following radio silence from the protocol after its last vague update to the community. Also, there are rumors that the core Multichain team was arrested in China. The protocol has neither denied nor responded to the claims at press time.

Fears surrounding the protocol have seemingly led players like the Fantom Foundation, crypto investment company Haskkey, and Justin Sun to pull out almost $3 million combined from Multichain.

Binance Enters NFT Lending Market With Ether Loans

In other Binance news, the crypto exchange will allow users of its NFT marketplace to borrow crypto tokens against NFT collateral.

The new feature comes with no fees and a 7.91% p/a interest rate. Users will be able to offer up their blue-chip NFTs from collections like Bored Apes and Azuki as collateral for ETH loans.