Sky Mavisthe developer behind Axie Infinitemanaged to recover approximately $5.7 million from the Ronin Operation of the bridge with the help of the Norwegian government.
In a press release dated June 7, the company declared:
“The Norwegian National Authority for the Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (Økokrim) has successfully frozen and returned $5.7 million in assets stolen during the Ronin Bridge incident.”
Ronin Bridge, a Ethereum sidechain for the game to win Axie Infinity, was exploited in 2022 for 173,600 Ethereum, worth over $615 million at the time. Since then, the company has been trying to recover the funds, without much success.
Meanwhile, the attacker, allegedly the North Korea-backed Lazarus Groupmoved a substantial amount of ETH stolen via crypto mixing tool Tornado Cash.
40 million dollars frozen
The company said various law enforcement agencies have frozen a total of $40 million associated with the incident. He added:
“It will take some time to recover these assets and we do not have sufficient information to provide guidance on a specific timeline for recovering and returning this separate pool of assets.”
These recoveries were made through the collaborative efforts of various agencies, including the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Økokrim, and blockchain forensics company Chainalysis. Sky Mavis highlighted the importance of coordination between law enforcement, legal teams, accountants and blockchain experts to recover stolen assets.
Sky Mavis plans to allocate approximately 15% of the recovered funds to cover recovery costs, with the remaining 85% returned to the Axie Infinity Treasury.
Meanwhile, asset recovery did not improve the price performance of Axie Infinity's AXS token or Ronin's RON. According to CryptoSlate data, the digital assets fell by 1.09 and 2.65% respectively in the last 24 hours.