- A attack on the Ethereum sidechain Ronin resulted in the freezing and repatriation of $5.7 million in funds by the Norwegian government.
- The creator of the web3 game Axie Infinity, Sky Mavis, invented Ronin. In March 2022, Ronin was the victim of an exploit that cost the company more than $600 million.
The $600 million Ronin exploit in 2022 has resulted in the freezing and repatriation of $5.7 million in cash by the Norwegian government.
The Ethereum sidechain known as Ronin was developed to facilitate the play-to-earn web3 game Axie Infinity, which was developed by Sky Mavis.
According to a Friday post on X by Sky Mavis, the Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (Økokrim) has effectively frozen and returned USD 5.7 million in stolen assets related to the Ronin Bridge disaster.
The developer of the Axie Infinity web3 game claimed that in order to retrieve the assets, law enforcement organizations, attorneys, accountants, and blockchain forensics companies like Chainalysis had to work together in concert.
It verified that 15% of the money will go toward paying expenses, and the remaining amount will be transferred into the Axie Infinity treasury.
We would like to publicly express our sincere gratitude to all those who helped with the recovery, particularly Þkokrim and the US FBI for their diligent work in locating and retrieving these assets for the villages of Axie and Ronin, Sky Mavis added.
The game developer reaffirmed that law enforcement agencies had so far frozen about $40 million in distinct assets, but it would take some time for these to recover and it could not provide a particular timeline for their return at this moment.
The $600 million scam by Ronin
The Ronin exploit from March 2022 stands as the biggest DeFi exploit ever, causing the loss of over $600 million in cryptocurrency holdings.
The attack, along with other attacks like the $100 million Harmony bridge exploit in January 2023, have been linked to North Korea’s Lazarus Group.
173,600 ETH, or about $590 million at the time, and $25.5 million worth of USDC stablecoin were lost as a result of the vulnerability.
In particular, during the incident, five of the nine validator private keys on the Ronin network were hacked.
The attacker was able to authorize and carry out fraudulent transactions to siphon money from the Ronin bridge—which is used to move assets between the Ethereum mainnet and the Ronin sidechain—as soon as they took control of those validators.
Disclaimer : This article was created for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. An asset’s past performance does not predict its future returns. Before making an investment, please conduct your own research, as digital assets like cryptocurrencies are highly risky and volatile financial instruments.
