The biggest crypto heist in history

Another blow to the crypto ecosystem, this time to Axie Infinity, the most successful of the games created in the aftermath of the cryptocurrency and NFT asset explosion.

A platform that, it should be noted, had rapid growth in its early days, attracting a huge number of players and investors who regarded this title as a model for future games and, coincidentally, the new paradigm of play to earn, play to win (money).

The fact is that, after an initial boom, the value of their NFTs has been declining for some time now, which we attribute to the fact that new investors have stopped entering in the proportion required to maintain its growth, and now, with the blow that Axie Infinity has received, its future does not appear to have cleared, but rather the opposite.

And it is that, as its own managers have had to report, the blockchain network on which the Axie Infinity crypto-economic architecture is based has been compromised, resulting in a theft of over 600 million dollars.

More specifically, the attackers took 173,600 Ethereum and 25.5 million USDC, a dollar-pegged stable coin that is well-regarded by the banking sector.

The major issue, however, is that the theft has exposed an open secret: the inadequate security of the Ronin network, which Axie Infinity uses, due to the small number of validators (the elements responsible for certifying each operation of the chain) that comprise it.

Only nine validators are in charge of accrediting network functioning. As a result, if an attacker gains control of five of them, he will have complete control of the system. And that is exactly what has occurred.

As in previous cases, there is explicit evidence of the cryptocurrency wallet to which the stolen Ethereum and USDC were transferred (if you are interested, you can see it at this link), but as in previous cases, solving that wallet in a person is terribly complex, so the possibility of recovering all of the money stolen from Axie Infinity users is not particularly high.

At the moment, individuals in charge of Axie Infinity have taken a number of steps, including increasing the number of validators required in each operation from five to eight, as well as detaching Ronin from the Ethereum network.

However, when we combine what has transpired with the fact that interest in the game appears to be declining in recent months, we get a bleak picture of the future.