Ronin bridge linked to Axie Infinity game halts amid $11.8M leak to MEV bots, white-hat activity suspected

The initial transaction occurred at around 9:37 a.m. UTC on Tuesday, involving the transfer of over 3,996 Ethereum ($9.8 million).

Another transaction at 10:11 a.m. involved the transfer of nearly $2 million in the USDC stablecoin.

Many speculated that this could be white-hat activity, meaning an ethical hacker could be behind the incident. The bridge was subsequently halted at 10:15 a.m.

“The Ronin Network bridge has been halted while we investigate a white hat hacker report of a potential MEV exploit,” Aleksander Larsen, aka “Psycheout,” co-founder of Axie Infinity and Ronin Network, posted on X.

“We will send you more information shortly. The bridge currently has over $850M secured, which is safe.”

Ronin Network later confirmed that the actors withdrew around 4,000 ETH and 2 million USDC, the maximum amounts of each asset that can be withdrawn from the bridge in a single transaction. #RONIN #HackerAlert #AXS🔥🔥🔥 #AxieInfiniy #HotTrens $RONIN $AXS