Ronen, a blockchain project, said on Tuesday that hackers stole cryptocurrency now worth about $615 million from its systems, in one of the largest cryptocurrency thefts on record.
The project said that on March 23, unknown hackers stole about 173,600 Ether tokens and $25.5 million. At current exchange rates, the stolen money is worth $615 million, but it was worth about $540 million at the time of the attack.
This makes it the second largest crypto theft on record, according to blockchain analysis firm Elliptic. Ronin is used to power the popular online game Axie Infinity, which uses non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and is the largest NFT pool by volume ever, according to market tracker NFT CryptoSlam.
Ronen said in a blog post that the hacker used stolen private keys – the passwords needed to access crypto funds – to
Ronen said he discovered the hack on Tuesday.
“We work directly with various government agencies to ensure that criminals are brought to justice,” she said, adding that she was discussing with Axie Infinity how to ensure users’ money is not lost.
She added that Ronin users are unable to withdraw or deposit funds on the network. Ronen did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent via Twitter. She said she is working with the main blockchain tracker Chainalysis to track the stolen funds.
Ronen said most of the money is still in the hackers’ digital wallet. Crypto platforms have always been plagued by it. Crypto arm of Jump Trading said last month that it had returned more than $320 million to crypto platform Wormhole after the decentralized finance site suffered one of the largest crypto thefts on record.
Last August, the hackers behind the largest cryptocurrency theft ever returned nearly $610 million plus they had stolen from the DeFi Network Poly website.
In 2018, about $530 million worth of digital tokens were stolen from Tokyo-based platform Coincheck. Mt.Gox, another Japanese exchange, collapsed in 2014 after hackers stole half a billion dollars in cryptocurrency.
Ronin is developed by Singapore-based game studio Sky Mavis, which owns Axie Infinity. Sky Mavis does not provide contact details on its website. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent via LinkedIn.
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