Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge Audited & Relaunched After Hack

Following the historic DeFi hack, Ronin blockchain has just announced that the Ronin Bridge is reopened and accessible for users.

According to Ronin’s newsletter, the relaunch follows three successful audits including one internal audit and two external audits by Verichains and Certik, in order to tackle development issues that caused the system to be hacked and made changes to improve.

Ronin Bridge is Back

Verichains and Certik are two leading audit firms in the crypto secto. After the attack, these companies analyzed the Ronin Bridge Smart Contracts and its components and disclosed key findings in terms of the system security.

“During the audit process, the audit team had identified some vulnerable issues in the application, along with some recommendations. Sky Mavis team has resolved and update smart contract code following our recommendations. Ronin Bridge Smart Contracts has passed with no Medium, High, or Critical severity issues,” said Verichains.

In this return, a new circuit-breaker system is integrated into the Ronin’s design, serving as an additional security layer to monitor and suspend any large suspicious withdrawals.

The system detects transactions that are too large to withdraw from the network and shuts the circuit for verification.

Big Hacks Are Everywhere

The fact that the previous event wasn’t noticed and confirmed by Sky Mavis until six days after the user reported being attacked is a big reason why this is significant.

The number of validator nodes will increase. Rather than the previous requirement of authentication from 5 out of 9 nodes, the network will now require authentication from 10 out of 11 nodes.

Sky Mavis, the team behind Ronin Bridge and Axie Infinity, had earlier announced the reopening plans in a separate announcement. This came three months after the incident.

On March 23, cyber attackers (later identified as North Korea’s Lazarus gang) took control of 5 of Ronin’s 9 validator nodes, enabling them to steal 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC from the bridge.

These assets were worth more than $600 million at the time of the occurrence, making it one of the greatest hacks in crypto history. The developers suspended the bridge and halted Katana, a decentralized exchange on the sidechain, after discovering the hack.

Not a Pretty Sight

Sky Mavis has teamed forces with companies such as Binance and Animoca Brands to raise $150 million in order to reimburse victims of the attack.

In an April interview with CoinDesk, Co-founder and COO of Axie Infinity Alexsander Larsen admitted that the system’s decentralized core was underdeveloped, providing hackers with a golden opportunity while forcing customers to suffer.

Many individuals questioned the decentralized nature of a DeFi initiative as a result of the incident.

According to CoinDesk, the crypto industry’s overall pattern right now is fairly centralized development at an early stage. The projects then promise decentralization in tandem with the rise of technology and users.

To decrease costs and boost transaction speed, Sky Mavis switched from the highly decentralized Ethereum network to the Ronin network.

However, the Ronin network has recently been rated low since it has a small number of validating nodes and is mostly monitored by Sky Mavis. The company envisioned it as a trade-off for growth, but it had no idea it would be so open to attack.

The team decided to set up and develop formal security technology solutions in collaboration with a number of network security experts in order to address the system vulnerability.

Taking this approach will result in the greatest services for protecting customers and their tokens from attacks by hackers.

Not only reimbursement and security, Sky Mavis is currently facing a crisis when Axie’s game model started to lose its charm.

The number of Axie Infinity players has also declined over time, pushing the Play-to-Earn revolution to the edge of recession. Sky Mavis announced its switch to the Play-and-Earn model with Axie Infinity: Original.