Axie Infinity reopens its Ronin bridge for the first time since US$ 600M hack

Three months after it suffered a massive cyberattack, Sky Mavis, developers of Axie Infinity, announced that it was reopening its Ronin Bridge. 

The Ronin Bridge was designed as an Ethereum sidechain allowing Axie Infinity players to move their assets to and from the game. Hackers attacked the bridge in March and made off with over US$600 million in tokens.

An investigation by the US Treasury Department was able to link the attack to a North Korean cybercrime group Lazarus, after which it tried to sanction the wallet holding the stolen crypto tokens.

Earlier this week, the Sky Mavis team eventually announced that the Ronin Bridge is back online and fully operational after conducting three audits and a redesign. The Ronin Bridge was originally scheduled for relaunch at the end of April, but Sky Mavis changed its plans, stating, 'this is not a process we can afford to rush.'

As promised, Sky Mavis also reimbursed users who lost funds from the attack.

'All wETH and USDC owned by Ronin Network users are now fully backed 1:1 by ETH and USDC on Ethereum, as promised. All users’ have been made whole,' the team said in an announcement.

So far, Sky Mavis has repaid 117,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC of the stolen funds by backing users’ Wrapped ETH (wETH) with ETH on the Ronin network.

Sky Mavis was able to get the reimbursement funds through contributions from Binance and other companies totaling US$ 150 million.

There is still 56,000 wETH unaccounted for that was stolen from the Axie DAO Treasury. Sky Mavis has enlisted the help of law enforcement agencies to recover the lost funds. However, if they aren’t found within two years, the DAO will decide the next steps.

The redesigned Ronin Bridge features an updated smart contract allowing validators to set a daily withdrawal limit, which is currently at US$ 50 million. The team also introduced a circuit breaker system that breaks down the monetary value of withdrawals into three tiers.

'The new bridge design includes a circuit-breaker system as a contingency plan which increases the security of the bridge by halting large suspicious withdrawals,' Sky Mavis’ announcement said.

As an extra precaution, Sky Mavis has already increased the number of its nodes to 11, with a long-term goal of having over 100 nodes in the future.

Photo: Sky Mavis