The Ronin Network, an Ethereum-based blockchain which powers popular NFT-game ‘Axie Infinity’, was breached last Wednesday, March 23. Hackers looted the network in one of the biggest crypto heists to date.
The developers at Sky Mavis, the company behind Axie Infinity and Ronin, only discovered the security breach on Tuesday, March 29th.
“There has been a security breach on the Ronin Network. We are working directly with various government agencies to ensure the criminals get brought to justice,” the company stated in an official report.
According to the report, hackers stole 174,000 ETH and 26 million USDC (a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar), amounting to losses of $625 million.
Exploiters hacked private keys with which they ordered the fraudulent withdrawal of cryptocurrencies. According to Ronin, “the attacker found a backdoor through our gas-free RPC (NYSE:RES) node, which they abused to get the signature for the Axie DAO validator.”
Axie Infinity was released in 2018 and gained massive popularity last year due to the titanic surge of NFTs, the metaverse, and blockchain gaming. The pet battling game reported having 1.8 million daily users in 2021, and reached an impressive $4 billion in total NFT sales.
On the Flipside
- At the time of the writing, all deposits and withdrawals on Ronin Network are temporarily suspended. The price of RON, the network’s native token, has already dropped by more than 25%.
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