On the morning of February 23, Web3 security team Ancilia.nc stated on social media that it detected that RON worth more than 3,000 ETH was withdrawn from the Ronin Bridge and deposited into Tornado within a short period of time. The wallets associated with the suspected hacker addresses (0x 73, 0x 39, 0x a 4) pre-deposited 0.1 ETH in Tornado, and withdrew a total of 3,250 ETH within the same period of time.

Ronin was stolen again? The reaction of the community was more of disbelief, I just started to be optimistic about him, and some people joked, Can I buy it at a low price? They should not be attacked a third time.

After the news fermented, RON fell off a cliff from $3.16 to $2.74 within 10 minutes, a drop of more than 13%.

Left image source@WazzCrypto

The stolen whale address is Axie Infinity Lianchuang

Twenty minutes later, Ronin co-founder Psycheout replied to the tweet, saying that there was no problem with Ronin and the cross-chain bridge. It was just a whale wallet that was stolen and used as Tornado Cash. The Ronin Bridge has high security and has undergone multiple audits. When a large amount of assets are withdrawn, withdrawals will be suspended.

Psycheout also continued to add comments, asking the Ancilia team to delete the tweet.

But what the community didnt expect was that the stolen whale turned out to be Jihoz, the co-founder of Axie Infinity and Ronin Network.

An hour after the communitys concerns about the breach were raised, Jihoz tweeted that two of his personal addresses had been compromised by a security breach. Jihoz emphasized that the attack was limited to his personal account and had nothing to do with the verification or operational activities of the Ronin chain. At the same time, the leaked keys have no connection with the operation of Sky Mavis. I want to assure everyone that we have adopted strict security measures for all on-chain related activities.

Pixels founder Luke Barwikowski and Ronin co-founded Psycheout, as well as members of the Ronin community expressed their comfort in response to Jihozs update. This stolen own goal has come to an end. As of the time of writing, RON has rebounded to around $3, and the short-term decline has narrowed to 5%.

Stolen PTSD, 600 million shadows 2 years ago

In fact, it is common for private keys to be stolen. The value of 3 million RON is not too large, accounting for only 0.1% of the circulation. Last month, when Ripple fell into the crisis of 213 million XRP being stolen (about 112 million U.S. dollars), XRP fell nearly 4% in a short time. However, the value of the assets lost in the Ronin incident was around 10 million U.S. dollars, but at 10 Caused a 13% drop in minutes? Such sensitivity and panic largely stem from the 600 million Ronin being stolen 2 years ago.

On March 23, 2022, four Ronin validators and a third-party validator run by Axie DAO out of the Ronin networks nine validation nodes were controlled by hackers. The Ronin official team became aware of this security flaw 7 days after being hacked. During this period, the attacker used the hacked private key to forge fake withdrawals and withdrew 173,600 ETH and $25.5 million from the Ronin cross-chain bridge. of USDC, worth $600 million.

Related Reading:Official summary of Ronin being stolen: The vulnerability was discovered 6 days ago and 5 private keys were stolen》

After the team announced the theft, RON fell by 20% in one day and continued to fall in the following month, shrinking by 84%. For most of 2022, the price of RON was below $1. Having such a painful experience, after discovering suspicious movements of assets on Ronin, the communitys first reaction must be Ronin has been stolen again?

However, Ronin is different at this time. In the past year, as Ronin continues to improve its infrastructure and the powerful chain game Pixel joins, the community has witnessed Ronins recovery from the trough. On February 9, RON was listed on Binance trading pairs. In the eyes of the community, this was a signal that the Ronin ecosystem was recognized by capital.

Related Reading:Ronin appears again after 600,600 days were stolen》

In addition to the ecology, Ronins security has been questioned by the community due to two points: the amount of stolen money amounted to 600 million, and the hacker attack was only discovered after 5 days. However, as Ronin has increased the number of verification nodes from 9 to 22 in recent years, and After the launch of Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) in April 2023, its security has been greatly improved. As of the time of writing, 190 million RON have been pledged.