▲圖片標題(來源：coindesk)

Crypto news seeped back into mainstream headlines last week with the disclosure of a $624 million heist from Axie Infinity’s Ronin Network. The attack targeted the Ronin Bridge, which enables users to pass funds between the Ronin network and Ethereum.

To some in the crypto world, the Ronin attack was evidence that the future of crypto, even if it is to be “multichain,” is unlikely to be “cross-chain.” With teams fleeing Ethereum for more centralized blockchains that are faster and cheaper, the Ronin attack also served as a reminder of decentralization’s importance.

Ronin is a sidechain, or parallel network, to Ethereum. Sky Mavis, the company behind the wildly popular play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, created Ronin in 2020 after realizing Ethereum’s base layer was too slow and expensive to handle all the transactions required to power such a game.

When you look under the hood, bridges like Ronin’s typically work by locking up cryptocurrency in smart contracts on one chain, and then re-issuing those tokens in “wrapped” form on a destination chain. So for example, if you were to use the Ronin Bridge to move ether (ETH) from Ethereum to Ronin, ETH would get locked up on Ethereum to serve as 1:1 backing for wrapped ether (WETH) issued on Ronin.

With so much money locked up in one place, bridges have become popular targets for thieves. The Ronin attacker pulled off March’s exploit by obtaining five of the nine validator keys that are responsible for securing the Ronin network. By holding a majority of the keys, the attacker was able to maliciously withdraw piles of cryptocurrency straight from the Ronin Bridge into a rogue Ethereum wallet.

Once the full extent of the Ronin attack became public, it quickly took its throne atop the infamous Rekt leaderboard, which started ranking attacks on DeFi protocols in 2020 in terms of money lost.

Ronin was not the first, nor is it likely to be the last, crypto bridge looted for vast sums of cryptocurrency. Joining Ronin in the second and third slots of Rekt’s leaderboard are two more attacks on crypto bridges. In third place is February’s $311 million exploit of the Wormhole bridge. And in second place is the August 2021 attack on the Poly Network bridge, where a hacker famously stole $611 million only to give it all back.

轉貼自： Coindesk

若喜歡本文，請關注我們的臉書 Please Like our Facebook Page： Big Data In Finance