Norwegian authorities help Sky Mavis recover $5.7M from Ronin bridge heist

Sky Mavis, the developer behind Axie Infinity, successfully recovered approximately $5.7 million from the Ronin Bridge exploit with the Norwegian government’s assistance.

In a June 7 statement, the firm stated:

“The Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (Økokrim) has successfully frozen and returned 5.7 M USD in stolen assets from the Ronin bridge incident.”

Ronin bridge, an Ethereum sidechain for the play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, was exploited in 2022 for 173,600 Ethereum, worth over $615 million at the time. Since then, the firm has been working to recover the funds with little success.

Meanwhile, the attacker, allegedly the North Korea-backed Lazarus Group, has moved a substantial amount of the stolen ETH through crypto mixing tool Tornado Cash.

$40 million frozen

The firm said various law enforcement agencies have frozen a total of $40 million associated with the incident. It added:

“These assets will take some time to recover and we don’t have enough information to give guidance around a specific timetable for recovering and returning this separate pool of assets.”

These recoveries were achieved through the collaborative efforts of various agencies, including the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), Økokrim, and blockchain forensic firm Chainalysis. Sky Mavis emphasized the importance of coordination among law enforcement, legal teams, accountants, and blockchain experts in retrieving the stolen assets.

Sky Mavis plans to allocate around 15% of the recovered funds to cover recovery costs, with the remaining 85% being returned to the Axie Infinity Treasury.

Meanwhile, the asset recovery did not improve Axie Infinity’s AXS token price performance or that of Ronin’s RON. According to CryptoSlate’s data, the digital assets were down 1.09 and 2.65%, respectively, over the last 24 hours.

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