In context: The cryptocurrency space has long been marred by Ponzi schemes, fraud, anti-consumer scams, and many rug-pulls and exit scams. With the advent of NFTs and blockchain games, the situation seems to be getting worse, with hundreds of millions evaporating from people who put their faith into these young and developing financial technologies.
Today, the developer behind a popular game called Axie Infinity announced that it suffered a serious breach of its Ronin cryptocurrency side-chain. The malicious actor used “hacked private keys” to break into Sky Mavis’s Ronin validator network. The hacker stole no less than 173,600 ETH ($586 million as of writing this) and a further $25.5 million in USDC, a stable coin pegged to the US dollar’s value.
This hack is not the first cryptocurrency heist, but it is easily one of the largest. It is bigger than the $611 million theft that occurred on the Poly Network in August 2021, one of the largest platforms for so-called decentralized finance.
FREE Digital Newspaper Subscription!
Sign up for your free digital subscription. The FREE Cape Cod News