In a very shocking series of events, Sky Mavis’s Ronin Blockchain platform on which their popular game Axie Infinity operates has come forward to reveal that they have just been the victims of a $625 million scam that took place on the 23rd of March but was apparently noticed very recently.
The attacker behind the heist made off with 173,600 Ethereum and 25.5M USDC (a stablecoin pegged to the US Dollar) in 2 transactions from the Ronin bridge, which was then valued at $540 million but has risen in price by now, making it the second-largest heist in crypto history.
Since NFTs became mainstream, NFT games have been among the most significant NFT and Web3 growth drivers. More companies and industries adopt NFT technology for their activities, but few have had more success than NFT games.
Sky Mavis is the company behind Axie Infinity and Ronin, and on Tuesday, March 30, the company revealed the attack against its system that resulted in one of the most expensive and scintillating losses of assets in NFT history.
Shortly after the heist, the company froze transactions on the Ronin Bridge, and this is noteworthy because the Ronin Bridge is what allows the depositing and withdrawing of funds from Sky Mavis’ blockchain.
Sky Mavis built its Ronin blockchain to give the company more control of processing speeds, price, and general user experience. Creating a dedicated Ronin blockchain isn’t a move isolated to Sky Mavis. It has become a good case practice adopted by a considerable number of players in the gaming NFT space.
Going through the stories about the causes of the Sky Mavis hack, one factor that becomes glaring is incompetence. The hacking episode could have been completely avoided if the team behind the Ronin blockchain had taken better long-term decisions rather than short-term fixes that compromises the system in the long term.