Breaking: Ronin Bridge Hacked For Over $600 Million In Crypto

Ronin, a popular Ethereum sidechain, famed for its association with Axie Infinity has been breached of over $600 million worth of digital assets.

The project developer, Sky Mavis, revealed this on Twitter where it stated that the hack had happened as far back as March 23 but it only got to discover this earlier today. According to the team, the hack involved the use of “private keys,” and which was used to forge the transaction.

Per the announcement, the attacker stole over 173,000 WETH (Wrapped Ethereum) which is worth $597 million and around $26 million worth of USDC. Cumulatively, this amounts to $622 million worth of crypto.

This hack, ranks as high as that of the Poly Network hacker who also siphoned over $600 million from the network.

A look at the hacker’s wallet would show that the funds are still in his wallet.

Per the report, five out of nine validator signatures are needed for deposit or withdrawal to be validated but somehow, the “attacker managed to get control over Sky Mavis’s four Ronin Validators and a third-party validator run by Axie DAO.”

The team has revealed that it is working to mitigate against future attacks by increasing the validator threshold from five to eight.

It was also revealed that the team was already in touch with the security teams at crypto exchanges so as to inform them when the funds are moved to either of them. At the same time, the Ronin Bridge has been temporarily paused.

According to data from Coingecko, the value of Axie Infinity’s native token, AXS, has fallen rapidly. The asset has lost over 7% of its value within the last one hour and is currently trading for $64.

Crypto Community Reacts

Members of the crypto community are reacting to news of the hack with some wondering how the hack lasted for close to a week without anyone noticing. Some reactions advised that “moving native assets from chain to chain is the way to go.  If only some Blockchains allowed for this.”

Other members of the community wondered if the hacker was going to return the stolen or if the team was going to refund their users.