Sky Mavis Recovers $5.7M from Ronin Bridge Hack

Sky Mavis, the creator of Axie Infinity, stated that some funds will be allocated to recovery expenses; in contrast, the remaining portion will be returned to the Axie treasury

Sky Mavis, the organization responsible for the well-known play-to-earn (P2E) game Axie Infinity, has disclosed that it has successfully recovered $5.7 million from the infamous Ronin Bridge incident of 2022 with the support of Norwegian authorities.

Norway’s central unit for combating economic and environmental crimes, “Økokrim,” froze and returned $5.7 million in funds from the Ronin Bridge breach on June 7, according to Sky Mavis.

Sky Mavis stated that the endeavors necessitated the collaboration of law enforcement, attorneys, accountants, and blockchain forensic teams such as Chainalysis.

The Norwegian government and the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were publicly acknowledged by the blockchain gaming firm for their assistance in monitoring the funds and the recovery of the assets.

A portion of the funds will be allocated to expenses.

According to the gaming company, the Axie Infinity AXS $8.31 treasury will receive the newly recovered funds. Nevertheless, a portion of the funds will be allocated to support the expenses of those who try to recover them. They composed the following:

“15% of recovered assets will be used to cover costs and expenses incurred by those involved in the recovery efforts. The remaining 85% of recovered funds will be deposited into the Axie Infinity treasury.”

The company announced that law enforcement has suspended an additional $40 million in digital assets in addition to the $5.7 million in recovered funds. The company has indicated that the recovery of these assets will require a significant amount of time, and they have not yet established a specific timeline for their return.

The Incident on the Ronin Bridge

The Ronin Bridge hack remains one of the most costly security lapses in the cryptocurrency industry. The Ronin network disclosed a security breach affecting the Ronin Bridge, a protocol that facilitates asset transfers from Ethereum to Ronin, on March 29, 2022.

The exploitation witnessed 173,600 Ether ETH $3,804 and 25.5 million USD Coin USD 1.00.

The attacker utilized compromised private keys to simulate withdrawals, resulting in the depletion of funds in two transactions. The assets were valued at $612 million at the time.

In April 2022, Sky Mavis conducted a funding round spearheaded by the crypto exchange Binance, which resulted in the collection of $150 million to reimburse affected users. Since then, the Axie Infinity developers have enhanced the Ronin blockchain’s security by collaborating with additional validators, such as Google Cloud.

Despite the incident, Ronin continues to be a prominent blockchain for nonfungible tokens (NFTs). At present, it is the third most successful blockchain in terms of all-time NFT sales, ranking behind Ethereum and Solana.