An unknown hacker stole cryptocurrencies worth about 625 million from the Ronin blockchain, which is the basis of the popular crypto game Axie Infinity. Operator Ronin and Axie Infinity Sky Mavis on Tuesday revealed a breach and froze transactions on the Ronin cross-chain bridge, which allows you to deposit and withdraw funds from the company’s blockchain.
According to the observations of The Block Research researcher Igor Igamberdiev, part of the funds went to centralized FTX exchanges and Crypto.com .
The hacker managed to get 173,600 ETH (currently worth about $ 600 million), as well as USDC stablecoins (a cryptocurrency pegged to the US dollar) with a total value of $25.5 million.
The project’s blog says that the attacker took advantage of the vulnerability on March 23. To implement the attack, he managed to gain control over five of the nine validators.
“The Sky Mavis team discovered a security breach on March 29 after reporting that the user was unable to withdraw 5000 ETH from the bridge,” the developers wrote.
Sky Mavis says that the NFT “axi” tokens that players must buy to access Axie Infinity have not been compromised, nor have the in-game cryptocurrencies SLP and AXS used to fight and breed Pokemon-like cartoon axolotls.
The fate of other users’ funds on the Ronin blockchain is questionable. Sky Mavis says it is “cooperating with law enforcement officials, forensic cryptographers and investors to ensure there is no loss of user funds,” calling it its “highest priority.”
At the moment, the Ronin hack appears to be the largest hacking of “decentralized finance” networks to date, following the theft of $322 million from the Wormhole bridge protocol last month. A similar incident occurred last year with the Poly Network project. The hacker withdrew $611 million, but later returned all the funds.