Earlier this week Vietnam-based blockchain gaming company Sky Mavis which launched Axie Infinity in 2018 declared that Axie Infinity was hacked. To breach the security, the attacker used private keys to drain about $622 million worth of crypto funds from a blockchain project linked the popular online game Axie Infinity through the bridge connecting Ronin to Ethereum.

Ronin Network is the blockchain that is used for the popular Ethereum NFT game Axie Infinity. Its products include a digital wallet for storing crypto and a “bridge” that lets users transfer crypto in and out of the game. This is where the crypto was stolen from. On March 23, the actual attack occurred which went unnoticed for days until almost a week later. The company Sky Mavis detailed that it became aware of the problem when a user attempted to withdraw 5,000 ETH worth of funds from Ronin. On Tuesday Sky Mavis found that the attacker drained 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC stable coins. During the discovery, the value of stolen cryptocurrencies was around $622 million.

As per the investigation, in the attack five of the nine validator nodes that sign transactions on the sidechain were accessed by the attacker. Meanwhile, bridge and the Katana decentralized exchange are temporarily shut down said the company, Sky Mavis. In addition, developers have promised to recover or reimburse all funds stolen. Judging by the amount of money stolen, the Ronin attack is the second-largest Defi hack of all time.

Soon after the security breach, Sky Mavis has decided to delay its long-awaited upgrade “Axie Infinity: Origin,”. It was initially scheduled to launch on Friday as an alpha version but now it got delayed by a week postponing to April 7.  On the same day, the co-founder of Axie, Jeff “Jiho” Zirlin appeared onstage at the NFTLA conference and spoke about Axie’s optimistic vision for the future. At the conference, he said, “It is one of the bigger hacks in history and we’re fully committed to continue building.”

Indrani bose

CBW - External Analyst

INDIA