Axie Infinity co-founder loses $10 million in crypto hack

Ronin is a blockchain created specifically for gamers, and Axie Infinity is a game based on this blockchain.

It is an EVM blockchain, i.e. compatible with Ethereum, and in fact Zirlin had ETH stolen from the Ronin bridge.

It should be noted, however, that it does not appear that this bridge has had any problems, nor that the Ronin chain has been compromised. The problem appears to be limited to the two compromised Zirlin wallets.

The co-founder of Axie Infinity explains that the private keys of those wallets have in fact been leaked, and that this has nothing to do with Sky Mavis’ operations either.

Then he adds that he will continue to move forward on this “magical journey”, with the mission of bringing economic freedom to all Internet users, starting with gamers.

Once Zirlin’s ETH was obtained, the stolen tokens were “washed” using Tornado Cash to lose track of their origins.

The story of Axie Infinity

Axie Infinity has nothing to do with this hack, but it should not be forgotten that in March two years ago another similar attack had also taken possession of some hacked private keys of addresses on the Ronin Bridge, and had allowed the attackers to even take possession of 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC.

At the time, the total value of those tokens was around 625 million dollars, so much so that it was by far one of the largest thefts in the history of cryptocurrencies.

However, that attack directly affected the network validation nodes of Sky Mavis, the publishers of Axie Infinity and Axie DAO.

The hackers actually violated Ronin’s cybersecurity, whereas in yesterday’s case there was no breach.

Since then it does not appear that Ronin’s IT security has been violated again, also because they took action by strengthening it so as to make it more resistant to attacks.

In the case of Zirlin, however, it seems that “only” the private keys of two of his addresses were intercepted, so that they could be emptied. This time the fault seems to be hers alone, while the Ronin network remained safe.

Il token AXS

Axie Infinity has its own token, AXS, whose market value was not affected in the slightest by the hack of its co-founder’s wallets.

It must be said that the price of AXS has been suffering for some time now, so much so that it is still -95% from the highs.

In particular, the 2022 hack generated a collapse from which the price of AXS was never able to recover.

The token debuted on the crypto markets in 2020 at around $0.18, months before the last major bullrun began. During the latter, its market value dramatically shot up to $165, with an incredible +90,000% in just over a year.

However, it must be said that already in November 2020, when the great bullrun began, the price had risen to $0.5, so this is the reference price to calculate the profit during the bullrun: +33,000%.

At that point it was more than obvious that there was a speculative bubble ready to explode, and so it happened starting from the end of November 2021.

Before the 2022 hack the price had already dropped below $50, but the worst was yet to come.

In fact, in April a further collapse began which first took it below $20, and then at the end of the year to $6.

The collapse then continued into 2023, with a drop to even $4. Although at that point the price was still much higher than the initial price of 2020, it was enormously lower than the highs of 2021.

During the mini-bull run at the end of 2023 the price of AXS rose a bit, so much so that it now stands at $7.7, which is a figure higher than the 2022 lows but not by much.