In biggest ever crypto heists, hackers steal over $600 million from blockchain company Ronin
The company also clarified that most of the funds are still in the hacker's digital wallet and that it is trying to track them
New Delhi: Blockchain company Ronin said on Tuesday that hackers have stolen their cryptocurrency assets worth $615 million from its systems.
Making it one of the largest heists recorded in terms of cryptocurrency, the company said that the hackers stole USD Coin tokens worth 25.5 million and around 173,600 ether tokens on March 23.
The blockchain project is used to power the commercial online game called Axie Infinity, wherein it uses non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
As per the NFT market tracker CryptoSlam, the company’s NFT collection is top-notch in terms of all-time sales volume.
Blockchain project Ronin revealed in a blog post that the hacker had used stolen private keys – the passwords needed to access crypto funds – to make off with the funds.
The project claimed that it had discovered the heist only on Tuesday. It further said, “We are working directly with various government agencies to ensure the criminals get brought to justice”.
The company further informed that it is in discussions with Axie Infinity on how to ensure no users’ funds were lost, while Ronin’s users are currently unable to withdraw or deposit funds on the network.
The company also clarified that most of the funds are still in the hacker’s digital wallet and that it is trying to track those funds with eminent blockchain tracker Chainalysis.
Meanwhile, this happens to be the third biggest crypto hack in recent times. Earlier, the decentralized finance site which is a cryptocurrency arm of Jump Trading was hit by a $320 million heist last month.
In August 2021, in the biggest crypto heist ever, hackers had returned around $610 million of digital assets they had stolen from DeFi site Poly Network.
For the unversed, the blockchain project Ronin is developed by Singapore-based game studio Sky Mavis, which also owns Axie Infinity.