On the morning of February 23rd, the Web3 security team Ancilia.nc announced on social media that they had detected the withdrawal of over 3000 ETH worth of RON from the Ronin bridge and its deposit into Tornado in a short period of time. The associated wallet addresses (0x73, 0x39, 0xa4) suspected to belong to the hacker had deposited 0.1 ETH into Tornado and withdrew a total of 3250 ETH at the same time.

Ronin has been hacked again? The community's reaction is mostly disbelief, "I just started to have faith in them," and some people jokingly suggest, "Can we buy in at a low price? They probably won't suffer a third attack."

After the news was released, RON plummeted from $3.16 to $2.74 within 10 minutes, a drop of over 13%.

Source of the left image@WazzCrypto

被盗鲸鱼地址是 Axie Infinity 联创

The stolen whale address is Axie Infinity联创.

Twenty minutes later, Psycheout, co-founder of Ronin, replied to the tweet, stating that both Ronin and the cross-chain bridge were not the issue. This was simply a case of a whale wallet being hacked and the funds being mixed through Tornado Cash. "The Ronin bridge has high security and has undergone multiple audits. When a large amount of assets are withdrawn, withdrawals will be temporarily suspended."

Psycheout continues to add comments, requesting that the Ancilia team delete the tweet.

But what the community didn't expect was that the stolen whale turned out to be Jihoz, the co-founder of Axie Infinity and Ronin Network.

One hour after the theft suspicion in the community, Jihoz tweeted that his two personal addresses were subject to a security attack. Jihoz emphasized that this attack was limited to his personal account and had nothing to do with the verification or operational activities of the Ronin chain. At the same time, the leaked keys have no connection to Sky Mavis' operations. "I want to assure everyone that we have taken strict security measures for all on-chain activities."

Pixels founder Luke Barwikowski and Ronin co-founder Psycheout, as well as Ronin community members, have all expressed their condolences under Jihoz's update. The "stolen accident" has been declared over, and as of the time of writing, RON has rebounded to around $3, with a short-term decline narrowing to 5%.

"Stolen PTSD": The Shadow of 600 Million Two Years Ago

Actually, the theft of private keys is a common occurrence, and the value of 3 million RON is not too large, accounting for only 0.1% of the circulation. Last month, when Ripple was in crisis due to the theft of 213 million XRP (about 112 million US dollars), XRP fell by nearly 4% in a short time. However, the loss of assets in the Ronin incident, which was worth about 10 million US dollars, caused a 13% drop in just 10 minutes. Such sensitivity and panic are largely due to the shadow of Ronin's theft of 600 million 2 years ago.

On March 23, 2022, four Ronin validators out of nine validation nodes on the Ronin network, as well as a third-party validator operated by Axie DAO, were compromised by hackers. The Ronin official team became aware of this security vulnerability seven days after the attack, during which the attackers used the compromised private key to forge false withdrawals and extracted 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC, worth $600 million, from the Ronin cross-chain bridge.

Related reading: "Ronin Official Summary of Theft: Vulnerability Discovered 6 Days Ago, 5 Private Keys Stolen"

After the team announced the theft, RON plummeted 20% in one day and continued to fall for the next month, shrinking by 84%. For most of 2022, RON's price remained below $1. With such a painful experience, when suspicious movements were discovered in assets on Ronin, the community's first reaction was surely "Has Ronin been stolen again?"

However, at this point, Ronin is no longer the same as before. Over the past year, with Ronin continuously improving its infrastructure and the addition of the Pixel gaming chain, the community has witnessed Ronin's recovery from its low point. On February 9th, RON was listed on the Binance exchange, which was seen as a signal of capital recognition for the Ronin ecosystem by the community.

Related reading: "Ronin returns after being stolen for 660 days".

Aside from its ecosystem, Ronin's security has been questioned by the community due to two incidents: "a theft of 600 million yuan and a discovery of a hack 5 days later." However, with Ronin increasing its validation nodes from 9 to 22 in recent years and introducing Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) in April 2023, its security has greatly improved. As of writing, 190 million RON tokens have been staked.

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