Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics company, revealed that over $30 million in stolen cryptocurrencies had been recovered in the Axie Infinity hack, one of the biggest DeFi attacks in history.
The company announced the official AxieCon event in Barcelona and released a blog post detailing its results.
Chainalysis on Axie Infinity hack
“With the help of law enforcement and leading organizations in the cryptocurrency industry, more than $30 million worth of cryptocurrency stolen by North Korean-linked hackers has been seized. This marks the first time ever that cryptocurrency stolen by a North Korean hacking group has been seized, and we’re confident it won’t be the last,” Chainalysis stated in its blog.
Chainalysis was able to monitor the assets, which the U.S. Treasury said were stolen by North Korea’s Lazarus cyber organization, as they were laundered and finally transmitted to centralized exchanges, according to the company.
Hack value decrease explained
“I am proud to say that the Chainalysis Crypto Incident Response team played a role in these seizures, utilizing advanced tracing techniques to follow stolen funds to cash out points and liaising with law enforcement and industry players to quickly freeze funds,” Chainalysis Senior Director of Investigations, Erin Plante, stated in their blog.
The worth of cryptocurrency during the assault was valued at $552 million but had increased to $622 million by the time it was announced to the public over a week later. This means that authorities have already recovered around 10% of the stolen cryptocurrency, as the crypto market meltdown in May and other variables led the value of the stolen crypto to decrease and be worth around $307 million.
Customers fully paid
Sky Mavis, the game developer of Axie Infinity, restored the blocked Ronin bridge in late June and repaid all individual customers in full. Still, a hole of 56,000 ETH remained in the Axie DAO’s treasury as law enforcement attempted to retrieve the money.