Hackers stole over $500m in cryptocurrency in record-making heist, Ronin says

Blockchain project Ronin said on Tuesday that hackers stole cryptocurrency now worth almost $615m from its systems, in what would be one of the largest cryptocurrency heists on record.

The project said that unidentified hackers on 23 March stole 173,600 ether tokens and 25.5 million USD coin tokens. At current exchange rates, the stolen funds are worth $615m, but they were worth $540m 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 biggest NFT collection by all-time sales volume, according to NFT market tracker CryptoSlam.

Hacks have long plagued crypto platforms.

The cryptocurrency arm of Jump Trading said last month it had restored more than $320m to crypto platform Wormhole after the decentralised finance site was hit with one of the largest crypto heists on record.

Last August, hackers behind likely the biggest ever digital coin heist returned nearly all of the $610m-plus they stole from the DeFi site Poly Network.

In 2018, digital tokens worth $530m were stolen from Tokyo-based platform Coincheck. Mt Gox, another Japanese exchange, collapsed in 2014 after hackers stole half a billion dollars of crypto.

Ronin is developed by Singapore-based game studio Sky Mavis, which owns Axie Infinity. Sky Mavis does not give contact details on its website. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent via Linkedin.