Ronin Has Been Hacked IDR 8.8 Trillion, One Of The Biggest Thefts In Blockchain History

Ronin is used to power up the popular online game Axie Infinity. (photo: twitter @Ronin_Network)

JAKARTA - Blockchain project Ronin announced on Tuesday, March 29, that hackers had stolen nearly $615 million worth of cryptocurrency from its system. This would be one of the largest cryptocurrency thefts in recorded history.

Project Ronin, said that an unknown hacker on March 23 stole about 173,600 ether tokens and 25.5 million USD Coin tokens. At current exchange rates, the stolen funds were worth 615 million, but were worth around $540 million at the time of the attack.

The Ronin bridge has been exploited for 173,600 Ethereum and 25.5M USDC.

The Ronin bridge and Katana Dex have been halted.

— Ronin (@Ronin_Network) March 29, 2022

This makes it the second-largest crypto theft in recorded history, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic.

According to NFT market tracker CryptoSlam, Ronin was used to power the popular online game Axie Infinity, which uses a non-fungible token (NFT) and is the largest NFT collection by sales volume of all time.

Ronin said in a blog post that hackers had used the stolen private key, a password needed to access crypto funds. After successfully breaking into, they then fled with the funds. “Ronin users cannot withdraw or deposit funds on the network,” said a source at Ronin.

Ronin did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent via Twitter by Reuters. They stated they were working with a major blockchain tracker, Chainalysis, to track the stolen funds. “Most of the funds are still in the hacker's digital wallets,” said Ronin.

Hacking has long plagued crypto platforms. This raises concerns that there are vulnerabilities in the system that make it easy to expose.

The cryptocurrency arm of Jump Trading said last month that it had recovered more than US$320 million (Rp 4.5 trillion) to crypto platform Wormhole after the decentralized finance site was hit by one of the largest crypto thefts on record.

Last August, the hackers behind the biggest possible digital coin theft also recovered nearly all of the $610 million they stole from DeFi site Poly Network.

In 2018, approximately US$530 million (7.6 trillion) worth of digital tokens were stolen from the Tokyo-based platform Coincheck. Mt. Gox, another Japanese exchange, collapsed in 2014 after hackers stole half a billion dollars of their crypto.

Ronin was developed by Singapore-based game studio Sky Mavis, which is owned by Axie Infinity. Sky Mavis does not provide contact details on its website. It did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the media.