Within hours of the temporary reopening of a long-frozen multi-chain bridge, a wallet address on the Fantom network saw a significant increase in value, going from $280,000 to nearly $1.9 million. This event, which occurred on November 1, sparked speculation and discussion within the crypto community about the nature of this sudden increase in wealth. The multi-chain bridge had been frozen since it was exploited in July 2023 and briefly reopened, allowing some wallets to make substantial profits.
During the temporary opening, certain assets, like Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC), were trading for less on the Fantom network compared to their counterparts on the Ethereum network. Some wallet addresses took advantage of this price discrepancy to swap their FTM tokens for these decoupled assets on Fantom and then transfer them to the Ethereum network, essentially regaining their full value.
One wallet address, starting with 0x4372, notably withdrew 1.9 million FTM tokens from Binance and exchanged them for Bitcoin on the Fantom Network. These BTC were then used for a cross-chain transfer to Ethereum through a multi-chain bridge, resulting in the acquisition of 28.4 wBTC (equivalent to $977,000), 357 Ethereum (approximately $642,000), and 298,000 Tether. Eventually, the assets were bridged back and transferred to Binance.
The crypto community has raised concerns not only about the wallet addresses involved but also about the "multi-chain executors." In a similar exploit earlier this year, the Fantom multi-chain bridge was used for over $126 million, where substantial amounts of various assets were drained. Some users questioned the timing of the trades, suggesting that they might be indicative of insider trading. These users argued that the bridge had been closed for over 120 days and was briefly reopened for these specific transactions, seemingly favoring the wallet owner.
As of the time of this report, neither the Fantom Network nor Multichain has issued an official statement addressing these events.
