Axie Infinity to reimburse Ronin bridge victims and reopen the bridge

• Axie Infinity plans to reopen the bridge next Tuesday.
• Each user will be eligible for one ETH held before the hack.

Owners of Axie Infinity (Sky Mavis) have announced a compensation plan for the Ronin bridge hack victims. Sky Mavis also stated that it would reopen the bridge next Tuesday. Three months ago, hackers stole $620 million worth of cryptos from the Ronin Bridge. Most of the amount represents 17,600 Ether (ETH) and 25.5 million USDC.

A Bloomberg report on Friday stated that users would receive one ETH for each previous one they owned before the hacking incident once the bridge reopened. Two months ago, Sky Mavis raised nearly $150 million from a fund-raising series to compensate victims of the hack.

Binance was among the leading contributors to that investment series. Other investors in that round included Accel, Paradigm, Dialectic, 16z, and Animoca Brands.

• We plan on re-opening the Ronin Bridge on June 28th, with all user funds returned.
• Re-opening will require on a Ronin hard-fork which requires all validators to update their software.
• Validators have been informed regarding next steps to upgrade their validating node.

— Ronin (@Ronin_Network) June 23, 2022

After the breach, the hacker transferred the stolen funds across multiple accounts. Their activities were untraceable as they used Tornado Cash to hide their funds’ transfer. Tornado Cash is an Ethereum-built non-custodial privacy solution.

Hacks and crypto industry

Hacking incidents have remained a thorny issue for the DeFi sector. Multiple data show that hacking incidents in the DeFi space this year have nearly doubled the ones that happened last year. An April 2022 data from the crypto-security firm, Immunefi, stated that investors lost more than $1.22 billion to hackers in the first quarter of this year.

That amount is eight times higher than the $154 million lost within the same period last year. Hackers have stolen over $1.22 billion worth of digital assets this year from various DeFi projects. Also, a report by the federal trade commission released on June 3, 2022, stated that over 46,000 people had lost more than $1 billion to crypto scams since January 2021.

Related: Social Media Platforms Were the Greatest Playgrounds for Crypto Scams in 2021: Report

This Ronin hack was a notable one because of the huge amount involved. It is on record that the amount was one of the largest ever stolen in a single incident hack from any DeFi project.

Moving on

The hack created massive fear in the crypto industry. Nevertheless, the Ronin blockchain moved on from the incident by continuing its business a few days later. Earlier this month, the blockchain crossed $4 billion in total NFT sales volumes.

Thus, ranking second to Ethereum in terms of all-time NFT sales volume. Its all-time NFT sales volume is now higher than other popular NFT networks such as Solana (SOL), polygon (MATIC), Wax (WAXP), and flow (FLOW). It is one of the most popular digital art networks in the industry. Hacking incidents, security breaches, and rug pulls aren’t new to the crypto sector.

There is hardly a day that there won’t be news about a hacking incident or another. On June 24, various media reports confirmed the hacking incident on the Horizon Bridge of the Harmony layer-1 blockchain. Hackers stole $100 million worth of altcoins and converted everything to ether.