The cross-chain bridge protocol has suspended service for some affected chains after being locked out of the necessary servers.

Last week, Multichain cited “force majeure” amid service disruptions that resulted in some user funds being stuck in limbo for several days. At the time, Crypto Twitter was rife with speculation that the protocol’s team had been arrested in China and local authorities had potentially seized a $1.6 billion wallet address belonging to the team.

In a Twitter update on Wednesday, the Multichain team reported that they were unable to contact their CEO Zhaojun to get into the servers required to conduct maintenance.

The protocol has now run into an issue with the scanning node network of one of its routers, which has disrupted the functionality of some cross-chain services. The team, which is now locked out from fixing the root cause, said it has suspended cross-chain services on the affected chains.

These blockchains are Kekchain, PublicMint, Dyno Chain, Red Light Chain, Dexit, Ekta, HPB, ONUS, Omax, Findora and Planq.

Multichain going down is really going to impact the user of some of these chains https://t.co/2bHq1lLb6s pic.twitter.com/mysdjk8Unp

— Conor (@jconorgrogan) May 31, 2023

“We appreciate the user’s understanding and request that our partners stop directly calling the Multichain protocol smart contracts on/to the affected chain for cross-chain operations,” stated the protocol.

Meanwhile, some users began speculating that crypto exchange Gate.io could also be in trouble, following an alleged $10 million transfer of FTM from the Multichain team to the exchange. Although blockchain data confirms that transactions for this amount were sent to Gate.io between May 25 and 26, the identity of the wallet address could not be confirmed.

For its part, Gate.io has denied any issues in a statement posted to its website on Wednesday, saying that operations and withdrawals are functioning as normal.

We’d like to assure you that https://t.co/8kWqgEeplL operations are running smoothly with no withdrawal issues.

Less FUD, More Trust. ❤️

Read more at: https://t.co/QsacFCtvbo

— Gate.io (@gate_io) June 1, 2023

However, data from DeFiLlama shows that the crypto exchange recorded $148 million worth of outflows in the last 24 hours.