Blockchain Project Ronin Affected By $615 Million Crypto Heist – Cryptovibes.com – Daily Cryptocurrency and FX News
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Blockchain project Ronin confirmed on March 29 that hackers stole crypto that is worth nearly $615 million from their systems. If that is the case, it is one of the biggest cryptocurrency heists on record today.
The project stated that anonymous hackers on March 23 stole 173,600 ether tokens and 25.5 million USD Coin tokens. Based on the current exchange rates, the stolen funds are worth $615 million. However, they were worth around $540 million at the time of the attack.
That makes it the second-biggest crypto theft on record, based on blockchain analysis company Elliptic. Ronin is used mainly to power the popular online game Axie Infinity utilizes non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and is the largest NFT collection by all-time sales volume, based on data acquired from NFT market tracker CryptoSlam.
Ronin stated in a blog post that the hacker had utilized stolen private keys, which are the passwords required to access crypto funds. They used these keys to steal the funds. Ronin confirmed that it had discovered the hack on Tuesday:
“We are working directly with various government agencies to ensure the criminals get brought to justice.”
The company is discussing with Axie Infinity how to guarantee that no users’ funds were lost. The Ronin users cannot withdraw or deposit funds on the network. Notably, the company never responded immediately to a request for comment that was sent through Twitter. It stated that it was working with Chainalysis to trace all the stolen funds.
For now, most of the funds are still stored in the hacker’s digital wallet. Hacks have long affected crypto platforms. The crypto arm of Jump Trading said in February that it had restored over $320 million of crypto platform Wormhole after the decentralized finance (DeFi) site was hit with one of the biggest crypto heists ever recorded.
In August 2021, hackers who are believed to be behind the largest-ever digital coin heist returned almost all of the $610 million they had stolen from the DeFi site Poly Network. Back in 2018, digital tokens worth around $530 million were stolen from Tokyo-based platform Coincheck. Mt. Gox, which is another Japanese exchange, collapsed in 2014 after some hackers stole half a billion dollars of cryptocurrency.
Ronin is developed by Sky Mavis, a Singapore-based game studio that owns Axie Infinity. Sky Mavis never gives contact details on its site. It did not respond to a request for comment sent through LinkedIn.
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