Not surprising at all.
Axie Infinity is an NFT game based on the current hot blockchain concept. The gameplay of the game is very simple, players need to use NFTs to buy 3 Axe (pets), lead their Axie to fight with other players, complete various tasks to obtain game coins, and these game coins can be directly linked to the real cryptocurrency platform, known as a game that can "make money while playing".
Overseas, where the NFT boom is prevalent, "Axie Infinity" has made a lot of money, and its peak monthly income of nearly 200 million US dollars once spawned related industrial chains in the Philippines and other countries, and it is the leader in the same category of games today. And it is such a "chain game king", but recently planted a big heel.
On March 29, employees of the Ronin Network, which provides NFT technical support for Axie Infinity, received a report from a user who had failed to extract 5,000 Ethers while on the job. 5,000 ether is not a small amount (a coin is currently worth about $3,000), and after some investigation, employees were surprised to find that their servers had been accessed by hackers as early as 6 days ago.
On March 23, hackers hacked into forged withdrawals of 5 validators' private keys, resulting in the loss of more than 173,600 Ethereum and millions of USDCs (cryptocurrencies), which is estimated to be about $625 million, surpassing the $611 million hack suffered by Poly Network in 2021, becoming the worst loss in the blockchain space ever.
Due to this sudden accident, the large version of "Axie Infinity" originally scheduled for March 31 was announced to be postponed for one week, a large number of verification nodes linked to "Axie Infinity" were all closed, a number of automatic market makers suspended operations, the price of Ronin Network's native currency fell by more than 27%, and for security reasons, Ronin Network users can not withdraw or deposit funds normally. You can only let the plummeting currency rot in your hands.
Ironically, such a serious security flaw was not only not checked out in the first place, but the official was even discovered through a report submitted by a big player. In other words, if only ordinary players are in trouble this time, the amount they lose may not be able to attract the attention of the authorities.
This incident undoubtedly poured cold water on the hot-growing "Axie Infinity", and looking at the entire industry, cryptocurrencies that advertise "decentralization" and hype "crypto security" seem to have been frequently stolen in recent years. According to Slowmist's website, the amount of hacking on blockchains has cost as much as $25.9 billion in the past decade, and the soaring figure has also made more and more people start to be cautious about this emerging industry.
Coincidentally, not long ago, the well-known business magazine "Forbes" wrote about the recent performance of NFTs and metaversms - the general public's desire to search has decreased, traditional manufacturers involved in NFTs often receive strong opposition from users, and the entire industry is cooling down rapidly. Taking the familiar game industry as an example, the behavior of many established manufacturers such as Ubisoft, Konami, and SE that recently tasted NFT has been disgusted and dissatisfied by players.
Although the Ronin Network has locked the wallet address of the hacker, they also said that due to the anonymity and decentralization of the blockchain platform, the stolen funds are difficult to recover. This is not only a huge loss of company property, this matter is more likely to become a fuse for the majority of players and user groups to lose confidence, and hit the entire blockchain game industry. Regardless of whether the funds will eventually be recovered, players will have to re-weigh whether this somewhat avant-garde industry is worth continuing to invest in.