Axie’s Ronin Bridge Will Re-Open After $552M Hack: Report

Axie’s Ronin Bridge will re-open after the $552 million exploits and will have all of the user funds returned during next week so let’s read more today in our cryptocurrency news.

The developer behind the video game Axie Infinity, Sky Mavis, said that it is preparing to re-open the Ronin Bridge which fell a victim to the $552 million hack in March. The re-opening of the Bridge which was used by players to transfer the funds between the Ronin Chain and the ETH Network is planned for June 28 with all of the user funds returned according to the latest upgrade.

Our engineering team has been hard at work preparing for the Bridge to re-open. Things are progressing nicely and we have some more information to share with you today: pic.twitter.com/fgFV62G3vd

— Ronin (@Ronin_Network) June 23, 2022

The team also noted that a hard fork will be required for the re-launch which means that the node operators will also be required to update the software. Node operators act as validators on the network and were already informed about the next steps they have to take where the non-validator nodes will have to follow specific instructions from the developers. Axie’s Ronin Bridge exploit was one of the biggest in the crypto space with the hacker stealing $522 million in USDC and Ethereum. The attacker used stolen private keys to sign transactions from nine validator nodes on the network and four of Sky Mavis’ own validators.

Sky Mavis announced that the re-designed Ronin Bridge passed an audit from the crypto security company Certik and came with minor suggestions:

“We are implementing Certik’s improvement recommendations and will begin to deploy the validator Governance Smart Contract.”

After the incident, Sky Mavis pledged to recover or reimburse the stolen user funds and the company raised $150 million in funding to aid the process. Binance crypto exchange led the fundraising with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm, and Animoca Brands. The developers launched a bug bounty program as well in order to encourage responsible disclosure of the security vulnerabilities. Some of the funds stolen in the attack near $7 million were sent to a crypto mixing service Tornado cash with the US treasury identifying three additional wallet addresses related to the North Korea Lazarus hacking group. A few cross-chain bridges fell victim to exploits in recent months and the latest one we witnessed was the attack on Harmony’s Horizon bridge out of $100 million.