Axie Infinity is by far the game play-to-earn most popular in the world, and has gradually managed to recover from the historic cryptocurrency theft it suffered last March. In fact, Sky Mavis, the company behind this title announced that next week will begin to return the amounts stolen to the affected users.
Refunds will start to take effect next tuesday june 28. That same day, the Ronin network bridge, which was where the hack in question took place, will be reopened. Once that happens, players can start withdrawing their lost funds. The return will cover exactly the same amount of tokens that users had at the time of the robbery, only now they will be worth less money due to the drop in the price of crypto assets.
Let us remember that the theft was caused by the attack on validator nodes of the Ronin network and Axie DAO, the decentralized autonomous organization created to strengthen the ecosystem of Axie Infinity. The hack allowed to drain 173,600 ETH and $25.5 million in the stablecoin USDC, which yielded an amount valued —at the time— at 620 million dollars. But with the marked drop in the prices of the main crypto assets since March to date, and taking into account the current price, the reimbursement of the stolen tokens will be equivalent to about 235 million dollars.
To face the return of the funds lost in the hack, the creators of Axie Infinity raised $150 million in a funding round which took place in April. It had the participation of companies such as Binance and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and from the beginning Sky Mavis stated that said money would be used to restore what was lost to users.
Sky Mavis reopens the Ronin Network Bridge, which powers Axie Infinity
The reopening of Ronin is great news for players of Axie Infinity, after almost three months since the attack. Throughout this period, the blockchain has been audited by CertiK, a leading security company in the sector. This week, said firm delivered the results and provided the recommendations to follow to avoid new vulnerabilities.
Those in charge of Ronin have already reported that the reopening of the bridge will require the implementation of a hard fork (hard fork), so all validators will have to update their node software.
For now, Sky Mavies wants to leave behind the bad experience of hacking and focus on the future. Aleksader Larseco-founder and chief operating officer of Axie Infinityposted on Twitter that the company will seek to expand its gaming portfolio. For this, a call was opened to developers who want to associate with the study and take advantage of its personalized tools.
“Supported games will receive tactical advice on how to go to market successfully and deep insights into token and game design leveraging our experience accumulated over the past four and a half years with Axie Infinity,” he explained.
As for the March hack, most of the money stolen from Axie Infinity in March could not be recovered. the fbi attributed the attack to the cybercriminal group Lazarus, from North Korea; but at least a percentage of the stolen cryptocurrencies were processed through Tornado Cash, a mixer that prevents following the trace of the assets in the blockchain. Binance, for its part, managed to recover just under 6 million dollars that the hackers tried to funnel through 86 accounts on the exchange.