Fantom Foundation Removes $2.4M in Liquidity from SushiSwap Pool, Causing Concerns Over Multichain Stability
The Fantom Foundation, the team behind the Fantom blockchain, has removed $2.4 million in liquidity from a trading pool for the native token of Multichain, causing concerns over the cross-chain bridging protocol's stability. According to Etherscan, the foundation removed nearly 450,000 MULTI and 1,363 ETH from a liquidity pool on decentralized exchange SushiSwap. The move comes as users of Multichain report delays in withdrawing their crypto assets from the protocol, which helps them move assets between the Fantom and Ethereum ecosystems. The Fantom Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The liquidity removal has corresponded with a plummet in MULTI's trading price, which has fallen over 28.5% in the past 24 hours to $5.04. Other top holders of Multichain's governance token have been sending it to exchanges, including one whale with 494,200 tokens worth $2.75 million and digital asset firm Hashkey Capital, whose position was worth $221,000 at the time. The major on-chain moves have raised concerns over the stability of the Multichain protocol and the Fantom blockchain as a whole. The Fantom Foundation has not yet commented on the situation.The price of Optimism (OP) tokens has fallen 7% ahead of a planned unlock of over $587 million worth of Ethereum scaling protocol tokens, leading to a significant increase in the circulating supply. The unlock, which is set to take place on Tuesday, will nearly double the current supply of OP tokens, which stands at 335 million. Early investors and contributors hold over 386 million tokens, and the move is expected to lead to significant selling pressure, with immediately available liquidity on OP token pairs across decentralized and centralized exchanges standing at under $10 million. The unlock comes as OP tokens have been on a general downturn since February, sliding from $3 to $1.5 despite gains of at least 50% for bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) in the same period. OP trades at $1.50 as of Tuesday, with a trading volume of $103 million over the past 24 hours. The move is expected to lead to a significant increase in the supply of OP tokens, potentially leading to a decrease in price.Centralized business structures are continuing their creep into decentralized finance (DeFi), with the builders of tokens Magic Internet Money (MIM) and SPELL on Wednesday pitching a traditional legal structure to supplant the DAO overseeing the stablecoin with a nearly $700 million market cap. In a forum post, a project leader called on Abracadabra DAO to support a “transition of power” to a centralized entity complete with lawyers, jurisdictions and trustees. Those trappings of a traditional corporation are seemingly antithetical to the notion of a DAO, the form of crypto-based business governance in which token holders directly call the shots. Despite our commitment to decentralization, we’ve recognized the importance of introducing a certain degree of centralized legal structure, the AbracadabraTeam account wrote. The purpose here is not to disrupt the decentralized nature of Abracadabra; in fact, it’s to protect it. Abracadabra DAO is the latest crypto project swapping the lofty idealism of decentralized governance for some degree of centralization, alongside SushiSwap and other projects. The reasons for these transitions range from heightened regulatory scrutiny to more mundane business concerns. For Abracadabra DAO, the publicly-shared reasons seem to tilt toward vanilla. AbracadabraTeam said the centralized entity would manage the DAO’s intellectual property as well as server expenses “while still keeping control in the hands of SPELL token holders.” Holders of SPELL (Abracadabra DAO’s governance token) will vote the project through three phases of transition, starting with picking a jurisdiction for the new entity. Four countries are on the table: Switzerland, Singapore, Malta and Bermuda. Phases two and three will define what the new entity’s roles are and how it will operate, according to the post. At press time, the SPELL token was trading 2.8% lower over the past 24 hours.