Axie Infinity
- Axie Infinity's owner said it will reimburse users who lost tokens during the $600 million hack.
- "We are fully committed to reimbursing our players as soon as possible," an executive told Bloomberg.
- Axie Infinity is one of the most popular play-to-earn crypto games.
The parent company of Axie Infinity that just fell victim to a historic, $625 million crypto-hack said it will reimburse users who lost money in the heist.
"We are fully committed to reimbursing our players as soon as possible," Aleksander Leonard Larsen, chief operating officer of Sky Mavis, told Bloomberg. "We're still working on a solution, that is an ongoing discussion."
The Ronin Network published a blog Tuesday explaining that a hacker compromised its network, exploiting the company for 173,600 ether and 25.5 million USDC stablecoins. It impacted the Ronin Network validator nodes for the gaming studio, Sky Mavis.
"We are working with law enforcement officials, forensic cryptographers, and our investors to make sure all funds are recovered or reimbursed," Ronin Network wrote. "The attacker used hacked private keys in order to forge fake withdrawals."
Funds stolen in the crypto hack include "deposits of players and speculators and the Axie Infinity Treasury revenue," Larsen said.
The attack happened on March 23, but the company only discovered it Tuesday.
Axie Infinity remains one of the most popular play-to-earn games, and users continued to log on Wednesday after news of the crypto heist. Hackers targeted a vulnerability in the bridge — or a software mechanism for exchanging types of crypto tokens — to drain funds in two separate transactions.
"The easiest way to look at this is like the bridge is the bank for the Ronin Network," Larsen said. "The heist that happened took out all the ETH and USDC. So the ETH/USDC on Ronin Network is not currently backed by anything. But we are looking at other options."
In August 2021, hackers targeted Poly Network, swiping more than $600 million from the cross-chain protocol, although most of those funds were eventually returned.
The native token used on the Ronin blockchain, RON, was down about 20% following the attack.