- The protocol was hacked and about $625 million was drained in an exploit.
- The Ronin protocol has assured users a 2-year allowance to recoup the stolen funds.
- Ronin Bridge believes users can now make transactions through the USDC and ETH.
Several months after it was hacked, Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge is now back online and in operation.
In March, the protocol was hacked and about $625 million was drained in an exploit.
Axie Infinity announced that all the users’ funds have now been restored to the network and safety is assured.
This was after Sky Mavis promised to restore the funds on a 1:1 basis.
Is The Ronin Protocol Safe?
Ronin Bridge believes users can now make transactions through the USDC and ETH. The Ronin team has sufficiently handled the liquidity issues through backing from the industry’s partners. Last week, the protocol hinted that it would reopen and confirmed that it had made a number of upgrades.
The upgrades were developed to prevent further attacks on the protocol and reassure users of the network’s safety. Before embarking on the reopening plans, Ronin conducted three audits within the platform.
One audit was initiated within the system while two other audits focused on the external variables that affect the protocol. Verichains and Certik facilitated external audits. The startup behind the Axie Infinity Play to Earn game, Sky Mavis, initiated the audits.
Sky Mavis helped the Ronin team to identify and implement a number of opportunities for improvement. Other updates made by Ronin Bridge include a new governance system and a new circuit breaker system.
The new governance system is expected to close all gaps whereby the governance process will be based on a decentralized voting mechanism. Governors will be empowered to vote for changes such as adding or removing validators, upgrading contracts and changing thresholds.
The voting system’s design is serial, whereby only one governance vote can be conducted at a time. The vote must be completed before moving to another vote. The new circuit breaker will automatically prevent withdrawals that surpass the limits defined by the tier-level accounts.
Over $600m digital assets lost
In recent months, protocols have experienced a myriad of cyber-attacks. According to the US Treasury Department, the Wythe Lazarus crime gang from North Korea was responsible for the Ronin attack.
On March 29, 2022, it was discovered that there had been a significant security breach in the Ronin platform. The ronin breach resulted in the theft of $25/5 million US dollar coins and 173,600 Ether. The over $600 million worth of digital assets lost made Ronin Ridge the largest hack in crypto history.
The hackers were able to exploit the vulnerabilities of the protocol by compromising the node keys for different validators. Validators are a set of nodes responsible for verifying the condition of a blockchain network.
Over 51% of the total validating nodes were in the control of the hackers which resulted in double spending escapades. The stolen funds remained unused in the wallet that hosted the digital assets. About $7 million worth of stolen digital assets was reported to have been transferred using Tornado cash, a privacy tool in the crypto space.
Amid fears of other cyber-attacks and the fallout to customers, Axie Infinity had to postpone the release of other products such as the Axie Infinity Origin. The Ronin protocol has assured users a 2-year allowance to recoup the stolen funds. In case the recovery efforts prove futile, a voting system will be set up to determine the next course of action.
