Sky Mavis recovers $5.7 million from Ronin Bridge hack

Sky Mavis, the company behind the popular Play-to-Earn (P2E) game Axie Infinity, has announced that it has recovered $5.7 million from the infamous Ronin Bridge incident of 2022 with the help of Norwegian authorities.

Norwegian government helped

On June 7, Sky Mavis announced that Norway’s Central Unit for Combating Economic and Environmental Crime, called “Økokrim,” had frozen and refunded $5.7 million in funds from the Ronin Bridge hack. This success required a coordinated effort between law enforcement, lawyers, accountants, and blockchain forensics teams like Chainalysis.

Sky Mavis publicly thanked the Norwegian government and the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for their assistance in tracking and recovering the funds. The recovered funds will largely return to Axie Infinity’s coffers, although some will be used to cover the costs of those involved in the recovery efforts. Sky Mavis stated: “15% of the recovered assets will be used to cover costs and expenses incurred by those involved in the recovery efforts. The remaining 85% of the recovered funds will be deposited into Axie Infinity’s treasury.”

In addition, Sky Mavis reported that law enforcement has frozen another $40 million in digital assets in addition to the $5.7 million in recovered funds. Recovering these assets will take time, and there is no specific timetable yet for their return.

One of the most expensive security breaches in the crypto space

The Ronin Bridge hack remains one of the most expensive security breaches in the cryptocurrency space. On March 29, 2022, the Ronin Network reported a security breach that led to the loss of 173,600 Ethereum and 25.5 million USD Coin, worth $612 million at the time. The attacker used compromised private keys to spoof withdrawals and siphon off the assets in two transactions.

In April 2022, Sky Mavis raised $150 million to compensate affected users through a funding round led by crypto exchange Binance. Since then, the company has strengthened the security of the Ronin blockchain by partnering with more validators, including Google Cloud.

Despite the incident, Ronin remains a top blockchain for non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Currently, it ranks third among the top blockchains by NFT sales of all time, behind Solana and Ethereum.