After Losing $625 Million, Axie’s Ronin Set To Offer $1M Bug Bounty

Key Insights:

• Going forward, Sky Mavis will be ramping up validator nodes to 21 in 3 months, with a long-term target of 100 nodes.
• Sky Mavis is also launching a $1 million bug bounty.
• The Ronin Bridge is expected to reopen by mid-late May.

Last month the crypto world witnessed the most devastating hack in its 13 years long history. This one instance certainly left many developers shocked and worried about their own projects, leading to introspection and necessary upgrades.

One of them is the victim of the hack, Ronin itself, who has come up with a plan of action for the future.

Ronin Bridge Is Set To Bounce Back

The hack, which wiped out 173,600 Ethereum and 25.5M USDC from the Ronin bridge, was conducted by the North Korean cybercriminals Lazarus. As reported by FXEmpire, this was confirmed by the US department of treasury itself. 

And since these criminals will certainly not entertain a plea of a bargain, the Ronin Network has taken things into its own hands, starting with the execution of its Security Roadmap.

Among the many things highlighted by Ronin, a few things are set to make a significant impact on the market and the bridge. Firstly, Sky Mavis will be increasing the number of validator nodes to 11 from 5 as it prepares to onboard three more soon.

The network aims to establish 21 validator nodes within the next three months with a long-term goal of creating 100 validator nodes.

Secondly, the bridge will be implementing Stricter Internal Procedures and explaining the same the report read,

“We are inspecting every area of security, including our internal procedures. We are putting a strong emphasis on security for all employees which includes more robust training courses to combat external threats and the use of work-only devices to further mitigate risks.”

Furthermore, Sky Mavis is also launching a Bug bounty program. Clearly, the last exploit was enough to break confidence, but Sky Mavis is looking to prevent the occurrences of any such situation.

For the same, $1 million worth of bounty has also been offered to encourage responsible disclosure of security vulnerabilities.

Ronin Bridge Set To Reopen?

Although Sky Mavis did not give out a confirmed date as to when they could re-start the Ronin bridge, it seems like they are aiming for mid-May or later next month, only when the Ronin contracts’ upgrade would be 100% finished.

In the meanwhile, Axie Infinity users can deposit and withdraw their wETH and USDC as they did on the Ronin Bridge via Binance.