Ronin bridge is now online, after it was breached by hackers, who carted away millions at the time. The update makes it months since the hack took place. Since then, it has been offline. As per the update, Sky Mavis mentioned that they have worked hard to ensure that it was back up as soon as possible. Notably, the platform in charge is also the parent company behind Axie Infinity, a platform that has become a popular sensation in the play to earn market.
Ronin bridge underwent a new design
The Ronin bridge acts as a medium where users can send and receive assets across different side chains of Ethereum and the main network. The company initially built it to be used for Axie Infinity after so many issues relating to sending and receiving tokens on Ethereum. The hack occurred in March, seeing the hackers steal the funds in Ethereum and stablecoin, USDC.
The hackers were said to have taken over the validator keys to ensure they had maximum control and made away with about $620 million at the time of the incident. In its announcement, the parent company noted that the Ronin bridge underwent three audits before they could bring it back online. Its statement said that they had external companies audit it twice after their audit. Asides from those, the bridge was designed using a new concept after the platform settled disgruntled users.
Sky Mavis blames hack on lack of decentralization
In its statement, Sky Mavis said that it had paid back all the owed tokens in the hack and now had liquidity which is in wETH. The platform was able to compensate users with more than 46000 ETH after it was allowed to use a bridge bonging to popular exchange, Binance. Aside from the help that Binance offered the platform, the liquidity was majorly taken from a different source. However, the platform has said there are still works in uncovering ETH belonging to the DAO that was stolen in the hack.
The new design will see users be able to set specific limits when they are withdrawing their tokens. There is also a new system in place that will help traders break their withdrawals into three types. In its statement after the hack, Sky Mavis blamed much of the fault on not making the platform decentralized enough. During the hack, the platform had about nine validators, holding on to five of them. The validators are presently 11, and the company is still considering increasing the count to above 20.
Source: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/ronin-bridge-returns-online-after-hack/