Multichain tweeted that its CEO Zhaojun was taken away by the Chinese police at home on May 21, and has since lost contact with the Multichain global team. The team contacted the MPC node operator and was informed that their access key for MPC node server operations had been revoked. In addition, these MPC node servers are actually running under Zhaojun's personal cloud server account like other normal servers. No one on the team had access to Zhaojun's personal cloud server account, so no one could log into these MPC servers. Later, the team got in touch with Zhaojun's family and learned that all of his computers, mobile phones, hardware wallets and seed phrases had been confiscated by the authorities. Since the establishment of the project, all operating funds and investors' investments have been under Zhaojun's control. This also means that all of the team's funds and access to the server are in the hands of Zhaojun and the police. Due to the lack of case information, the team can only do their best to maintain the project operation through the remaining access rights of some non-MPC servers that have not been revoked. Under the lawyer's suggestion, the project team chose to cooperate with the requirements of Zhaojun's family as much as possible, abide by the requirements of local laws and regulations, and not disclose unauthorized case information to the public. On May 30, in a socially responsible manner, the working group released the news of Zhaojun's disappearance and informed the society of the current technical problems. On June 4, Zhaojun's family successfully logged into the cloud server platform using the historical information of his home computer. However, Zhaojun’s family only allowed Multichain team engineers physical access to Zhaojun’s home computer to troubleshoot technical issues with Router2 and Router5. During this time, Zhaojun's family and lawyers remained in contact with the police. The team was not informed of the specifics of the case, but was notified that Zhaojun would be released soon and asked to continue maintaining the system pending further updates. The Multichain protocol continues to function as designed. The team uses limited resources to do everything possible to maintain the operation of the Multichain protocol and solve users' problems as much as possible. On July 7, user assets locked on MPC addresses were abnormally transferred to unknown addresses. According to sister Zhaojun, the login information of an IP address in Kunming and a series of operations to transfer funds from the MPC address were found on the cloud server platform. On July 9, Zhaojun's sister transferred the remaining user assets in the router pool, and then notified the team and several project parties of this asset preservation behavior. Funds were transferred to EOA addresses controlled by Zhaojun’s sister: 0x1eed63efba5f81d95bfe37d82c8e736b974f477b, 0x6b6314f4f07c974600d872182dcde092c480e57b. On July 13, according to the information provided by Zhaojun's family, the police took Zhaojun's sister away. Now, Zhaojun's sister has also lost contact. The status of the property she retains is unknown, and the Working Group therefore considers it necessary to inform the community of all known circumstances. Due to lack of other sources of information and corresponding funds for operations, the team was forced to cease operations. The team will keep the community informed of any further announcements and developments. The Multichain team does not have access to Domain accounts to redirect or shut down the frontend http://multichain.org. Users are requested not to use the Multichain service any more.
JinseFinance
Aaron
8btc
Cointelegraph