Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge Goes Live Again As Victims Get Fully Reimbursed 

Sky Mavis and the Ronin (RON) team have announced on June 28, 2022, that users of the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform can now make deposits and withdrawals once again to and from the network, as the Ronin Bridge is officially open and ready for use. The team says users’ funds are fully backed 1:1 by the new bridge and all victims of the Ronin heist have now been fully reimbursed.

Ronin Bridge Officially Open 

After three months of suspending operations to enable it to patch the loopholes that allowed hackers to steal $625 million worth of ether (ETH) and USDC from its coffers, the Ronin Bridge is now officially open and users can now start making deposits and withdrawals as usual.

For the uninitiated, Ronin Bridge is designed to facilitate the seamless transfer of tokens between the Ethereum network and Axie Infinity’s Ronin blockchain. 

It will be recalled that Axie Infinity’s Sky Mavis said earlier in April that he would bear full responsibility for refunding the 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC drained from Ronin during the attack. Mavis has fulfilled that promise, as all the victims of the attack have reportedly been made whole.

The Ronin team has revealed via a blog post that out of the stolen 173,600 ETH, 56k belonged to the Axie DAO treasury and it will remain undercollateralized as the team continues to work with law enforcement to recover the funds.

The team has made it clear that the Axie DAO will vote on the next steps for the treasury if the 56k ETH is not recovered within two years.

Ronin Hack Victims Get Refunds 

What’s more, Sky Mavis and the Ronin team were able to collaborate with the Binance crypto exchange to process refunds for other users in April.

“The total liability left, minus the 56k belonging to the Axie DAO Treasury, stands at 117,600 ETH and 25.5M USDC. Binance opened their bridge on April 2nd, enabling Ronin Network users to withdraw wETH, and from there, turn that into ETH. Since April 2, 46,000 wETH has been transferred to Binance from Ronin users,” wrote the team.

Notably, the team has stated that the 46k ETH used to repay users was taken from the Axie Infinity balance sheet and funds from the founding team. Binance has also transferred the 46,000 wETH to Axie Infinity on Ronin and the funds were in turn burned out of circulation.

“This leaves 71,600 ETH and 25.5M in liabilities, which have been fully reimbursed by Sky Mavis. All wETH and USDC owned by Ronin Network users are now fully backed 1:1 by ETH and USDC on Ethereum, as promised. All users’ have been made whole.

The Ronin team says it has successfully completed a full reassessment of the platform in collaboration with independent auditors, Certik and Verichains. These audits have enabled it to introduce three key security features: Decentralized Voting, the Ronin Circuit Breaker, and Daily Withdrawal Limits, to further safeguard the network. 

The team says it plans to release Land Staking this week and has advised users to refrain from sending funds directly to the Ronin Bridge contract address. Instead, all deposit and withdrawal activities must be done via the Ronin Bridge user interface.