Sky Mavis recovers stolen assets worth $5.7 million

Sky Mavis, the creator of the Web3 game Axie Infinity, has recovered $5.7 million worth of stolen assets associated with the 2022 Ronin Bridge hack with help from Norwegian authorities and the US FBI.

Also read: Ronin Blockchain Comes Ahead Among Gaming Chain Leaders

The game studio shared the news of recovery in a recent tweet, in which it thanked Norway’s Økokrim and the FBI in the US for freezing and retrieving assets worth $5.7 million. It also mentioned that an additional $40 million worth of separate assets have been frozen by law enforcement authorities.

Today we received some exciting news from the Norwegian government and Økokrim.

The Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (Økokrim) has successfully frozen and returned 5.7 M USD in stolen assets from the Ronin bridge…

— Sky Mavis (@SkyMavisHQ) June 7, 2024

85% of the recovered funds will go into the Axie Infinity treasury

Sky Mavis has mentioned that 15% of the recovered funds will be used to cover the costs of recovering the assets. The remaining 85% of funds will go into the Axie Infinity treasury. The game studio publicly acknowledged the efforts made by the Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (Økokrim), lawyers, accountants, the FBI, and Chainanalysis. 

The game studio has also reminded the community that over $40m worth of assets are yet to be recovered. While these assets have been frozen by law enforcement agencies, no timeline has been given regarding the recovery of this pool of assets. Sky Mavis mentioned that it may take some time to retrieve those assets. 

What happened in the 2022 Ronin Bridge hack? 

On 29 March 2022, a security breach on the Ronin Bridge resulted in the loss of 25.5 million USDC and 173,600 Ethereum in two separate transactions. The Ronin attacker had used hacked private to fake the asset withdrawals. Over $600 million worth of assets were stolen in the breach. At that time, the FBI in the US attributed the attack to North Korean hackers.

Also read: Axie Infinity Announces $1M Bug Bounty to Advance Ronin Network Security

To reimburse users, Sky Mavis raised $150 million in a funding round organized by Binance in April 2022. In the same month, Sky Mavis announced a $1 million bug bounty program to find potential vulnerabilities in its games, extensions, wallets, and the Ronin Network. 

Cryptopolitan reporting by Shummas Humayun