Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge Open for Business After $600 million hack

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Axie Infinity was the victim of one of the biggest crypto heists in March this year. The massive $625 million hack shook the crypto space, with crypto investors asking if the security concerns will ever go away.

Axie is now back in action with its Ronin Bridge restored, strengthened with a bunch of new security upgrades.

Details of the Axie Infinity New and Improved Ronin Bridge

After a whopping 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC were drained from the system on March 29, 2022, Axie Infinity and Sky Mavis came together to ensure they would cover all the funds users lost.

As 56,000 of the Wrapped ETH belonged to the AXIS DOA treasury, the equivalent 56,000 Eth will remain undercollateralized. Sky Mavis is collaborating with the authorities to recover the funds.

Axie Infinity’s current plan is to recover the funds within the next two years.

So, out of the total 173,600 ETH, Axie Infinity’s current liability stands at 117,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC.

What has been done so far?

The incident led Binance to close the bridge from their end to prevent further leakage. The bridge finally opened for Ronin Network users to convert their wETH into ETH.

Since that day, Ronin users have transferred 46,000 wETH to Binance. Binance, in turn, provided it to Axie Infinity. The founding team then topped Binance’s 46,000 ETH liquidity to refund the users. The received 46,000 wETH were burned on the Ronin Network.

The remaining 71,600 ETH and 25.5M USDC liabilities have been reimbursed by Sky mavis.

The Ronin Network users are now fully backed 1:1 by USDC and ETH.

And with it, Ronin Bridge is finally open.

The Ronin Bridge is open!

• All user funds are fully backed 1:1 by the new bridge.
• The bridge has undergone an internal audit and two external audits.
• We are still on track to release Land Staking this week.

📝 : https://t.co/ZRqslOwXpo pic.twitter.com/xOgsZHvVGc

— Ronin (@Ronin_Network) June 28, 2022

Ronin Network Internal Audit Details

Sky Mavis Partnered with Verichains and Certrik, independent blockchain auditors, to conduct a full security assessment of the Ronin Bridge. The highlight is the new and improved bridge, now called Ronin Bridge V2, which now comes with two security upgrades and one restriction.

Validator Governance

Ronin has adopted a decentralized governance mechanism that will include voting. The upgrade comes with a new addition known as the “Governors .”Governors will have the power to vote for the structural changes of the Ronin Bridge, including upgrading contracts, threshold change, and adding or removing validators.

The governance voting method will be serialized. That is, no governance proposals can be voted on simultaneously.

Circuit Breaker System

The Ronin Circuit breaker system is a contingency plan to restrict the withdrawal limits if there are any hacking attempts in the future. The bridge will set these limits based on the overall value.

There are three tiers defining the three withdrawal thresholds.

Tier 1 threshold will come into effect after the approval of 70% of validators.
Tier 2 threshold will require the approval of 90% of validators when the withdrawal is more than or equal to $1 million.
Tier 3 threshold will come into effect after the approval of 90% of validators. It is for withdrawals exceeding $10 million. It will also include a human review. And because there is human interaction in the equation, users will have to be a small interaction fee of 0.001%.

Tier 3 Withdrawals will have after the 7-day review process is complete.

Daily Withdrawal Limits

The new Ronin Bridge has also updated the smart contract software to allow validators to set the validator limit. Currently, the limit is $50M a day. If that limit is crossed early, the administrator will reset it.

This limit is not part of Tier 3 and won’t require human review or administrative action.

This is Truly a Great Step for Play-to-Earn as a Whole: Twitter Reacts

The news of the recent upgrade has struck the right chord with the crypto-twitter, with many saying that this upgrade sets precedence for the future of the blockchain ecosystem.

And some are quoting heroic lines in admiration of the token, saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

Yet, some are not “too excited about it .”One user said that since the bear market has lowered the values of tokens, it became easier for Ronin to fully back the money lost during the hack.

The bottom line is that what Ronin was able to accomplish here is admirable. It is a breeze of positive news in this sweltering bear market. Whether or not it would affect the Axie Infinity Price is something we have to wait and see.