After yet another crypto exploit, Ronin Bridge claims it has recovered lost funds

Ronin, the popular blockchain gaming-focused protocol, has once again been exploited. This time, however, the team says it has recovered the lost funds.

Yesterday, the protocol was forced to pause after reports of a white-hat exploit – which resulted in the loss of around $12 million worth of ethereum (ETH) and USD coin (USDC) – were confirmed.

The loss could have been bigger, but it was the maximum amount of ETH and USDC that can be withdrawn from Ronin in a single transaction. Per the team, the protocol was paused after around 40 minutes after the first on-chain action was noticed.

However, after about five hours, the Ronin team confirmed that all the lost funds were recovered, and the white hats were awarded a $500,000 bounty from their bug bounty program.

"We thank the white hats for their vigilance and integrity," Ronin added, noting that they will resume operations after an audit is complete. They also promised to change their operational structure and implement a new, unspecified solution.

In their initial assessment, the team said their recent upgrade "introduced an issue leading the bridge to misinterpret the required bridge operators vote threshold to withdraw funds." A more detailed post-mortem is expected to be shared next week.

Ronin is developed by Vietnamese studio Sky Mavis, the developer of the popular blockchain game Axie Infinity. In April 2022, Ronin lost approximately $600 million worth of crypto assets. According to public information, around $36 million worth of the tokens have been recovered thus far.

It's not uncommon for an exploited crypto project to recover all or part of the lost funds. You can find a list of the top 10 biggest crypto hacks that recovered millions here.