After the hack of $650 million Ronin bridge, Axie Infinity’s popular blockchain game has suffered a shake-up. Sky Mavis (the studio that developed the game) has taken multiple steps to protect the network and regain the trust of its users. Sky Mavis, the game’s creator, has announced a $1,000,000 bug bounty program inviting white-hat hackers to stress check the blockchain.
Sky Mavis’s Co-Founder, COO and Axie’s Co-Founder announced: “All whitehats working in blockchain are welcome. Sky Mavis Bug Bounty is now available. Keep the lights on! Ronin Network You can feel secure and still earn a lot of moneyp to $1,000,000 in bounty for fatal bugs.”
The Ronin Hack
A hacker managed to grab $600 million from Ronin bridge on March 23rd. It’s the most significant hack to date in the history decentralized finances. The Ronin Network team confirmed that Sky Mavis’s Ronin validator nodes and Axie DAO validator nodes were compromised as the attacker used “hacked private keys in order to forge fake withdrawals.”
The attacker could not withdraw 5k ETH from a bridge, and the attack was detected. It was too late as the attackers had already taken 173,600 Ethereum from Ronin Bridge and 25.5M USDC in just two transactions.
The Ronin team stated that they are working with law enforcement officials, forensic cryptographers, and investors “to make sure all funds are recovered or reimbursed,” and added that “All of the AXS, RON, and SLP on Ronin are safe right now.”
“While racing for mainstream adoption, we made some trade-offs that ended up leaving us vulnerable to this sort of attack. It’s a lesson that we’ve learned the hard way. It is a lesson that will help us build Ronin in the future. We’re confident that we will come out stronger and wiser from this.”
As a response, the Sky Mavis team raised $150 million led by crypto exchange Binance with participation from Animoca Brands, a16z, Dialectic, Paradigm, with the goal to reimburse all the funds stolen during the hack to the affected users.
Since then, the team has been working with Chainalysis and Crowdstrike “to monitor the stolen funds” and “to handle forensics and the setup of surveillance tools.”
This hack highlighted the vulnerability of bridges for projects using blockchain. Bridges are used to connect blockchains and enable transactions between tokens based on different ecosystems. However, bridges have a complex code and don’t have enough security standards yet, and hackers are gazing upon them to spot any vulnerability.
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Bounty $1M
Bridges can be so complex that it is not 100% clear if code auditing is enough to ensure the Ronin bridge’s safety. The Ronin team had stated that they are in the process of “implementing rigorous internal security measures to prevent future attacks.”
“The Ronin Network bridge will open once it has undergone a security upgrade and several audits, which can take several weeks.”
They are now asking all white-hat blockchain hackers to help them find vulnerabilities and receive a nice reward. While stress testing products should be prioritized over websites and apps, smart contracts and blockchain are also recommended. Their only concern is the vulnerability of certain products. These are the people who qualify for monetary prizesWith a proof-of-concept that works, it shows how these can be used.
Get Rewards Prices for smart contracts and blockchain range from $1,000 to $1,000,000. For web and apps, the prices vary between $50 and $15,000. The rewards are paid in AXS tokens. A limited amount of received funds may be liquidated monthly.
“It is possible that extraordinarily severe issues or those with extreme impact may be rewarded up to $1,000,000″ the announcement stated and added that “Sky Mavis may award an additional reward bonus for exceptional reports.·
The Axie Infinity price (AXS)
For the past weeks, Axie Infinity’s token AXS has been tumbling, falling around 30% after the hack. Trader are keeping an eye out for AXS to rebound if it breaks above $58, as this zone was previously used for accumulation. A head-and shoulders pattern could also be possible, which would further lower AXS. Over the last 24 hour, the token fell 0.09%.
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