Some Relief for those Affected by the Ronin Bridge Exploit - Bridge to Reopen
Of late, most of the news has been comprised of reporting new hacks/exploits to various cryptocurrency projects, especially bridges. But for a change, it was very nice to read the following news concerning relief available to those affected by one of the worst exploits in crypto history.
Sky Mavis, the creator of the play-to-earn game Axie Infinity (AXS), announced that it will reimburse victims of the Ronin bridge hack and reopen the bridge next week. In March, hackers stole more than $620 million in the heist, which included roughly 17,600 Ether (ETH) and 25.5 million USD Coin (USDC) tokens.
[Kirimi. A. Axie Infinity to compensate Ronin exploit victims and relaunch bridge. (Accessed June 25, 2022)].
According to Bloomberg:
Users can withdrawal one Ether for each one they held in March once the bridge reopens, a spokeswoman for Sky Mavis said in a statement. The 56,000 Ether tokens missing from the Axie Infinity-related DAO, or decentralized autonomous organization’s treasury, will remain uncollateralized.
[Kharif, O. Axie-Infinity Developer to Reimburse Hack Victims, Restart Ronin. (Accessed June 25, 2022)].
On March 30, 2022, Sky Mavis (owner of Axie Infinity) pledged:
The company behind the popular Axie Infinity crypto game said it will reimburse online participants who lost funds after hackers stole about $600 million from a blockchain system underpinning the game. 'We are fully committed to reimbursing our players as soon as possible,' Aleksander Leonard Larsen, chief operating officer of the gaming studio Sky Mavis, said via text message. 'We’re still working on a solution, that is an ongoing discussion'.
[Servando, K. and Lagerkranser, P. Axie Infinity Owner ‘Fully Committed’ to Reimbursing Players After Hack. (Accessed June 25, 2022)].
To accomplish this reimbursement, Sky Mavis "raised $150 million in a funding round led by crypto exchange Binance in April. At the time, the firm said it planned to use the money and Sky Mavis’s and Axie Infinity’s own resources to reimburse Ronin bridge users" [Kharif, supra]. "Animoca Brands,16z, Dialectic, Paradigm and Accel were among the investors during the funding round" [Kirimi, supra].
The hacker moved the stolen assets around soon after the breach, using TornadoCash to conceal their activities. This is a significant issue for the decentralized finance (DeFi) industry, which has suffered more than $1.22 billion in losses thus far this year. The Ronin hack was one of the most notable events in recent memory, causing tremors throughout the cryptocurrency industry. Despite this, the Ronin blockchain was not deterred in its mission to achieve significant milestones.
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With the Ronin Bridge set to be refilled June 28, 2022, and the reimbursements to be made upon the refill, Sky Mavis is set to move forward. In a tweet yesterday (June 24, 2022), Sky Mavis stated:
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Final Thoughts
The Ronin bridge hack was one of the most significant to take place in recent times. While it did send shockwaves throughout the crypto world, that did not stop the Ronin blockchain from achieving some major milestones. The blockchain surpassed $4 billion in all-time non-fungible token (NFT) sales volumes in early June, and it continues to be popular as a digital collectible network. It is second behind Ethereum in terms of all-time NFT sales volumes, beating Solana, Flow, Polygon, and WAX, among many others. A lot of that success comes down to Axie Infinity, an incredibly popular play-to-earn game by any standards.
[Nambiampurath, R. Axie Infinity Developer to Reimburse Ronin Hack Victims. (Accessed June 25, 2022)].
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