Binance Says $5.8M Recovered From $550M Ronin Attack

Binance has recovered $5.8 million of funds stolen from Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge by North Korea’s Lazarus Group, Changpeng Zhao has said. 

Binance Recovers Funds

Binance has hit back against the Ronin bridge hackers.

In a Friday morning tweet, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced the exchange had recovered $5.8 million of funds stolen in the Ronin Bridge attack. 

The DPRK hacking group started to move their Axie Infinity stolen funds today. Part of it made to Binance, spread across over 86 accounts. $5.8M has been recovered. We done this many times for other projects in the past too. Stay #SAFU.

— CZ ???? Binance (@cz_binance) April 22, 2022

Zhao’s tweet revealed that the funds, which Lazarus Group was presumably trying to launder through Binance, were spread across more than 86 different accounts. “$5.8M has been recovered. [We’ve] done this many times for other projects in the past too. Stay #SAFU,” his tweet ended. 

The Ronin bridge hack cost Axie Infinity creator Sky Mavis 173,600 ETH and over 25 million in USDC stablecoins, with a combined value of over $550 million at the time of the hack on Mar. 23. In the weeks following the attack, the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control identified the wallets implicated in the hack as belonging to the North Korean cybercrime syndicate Lazarus Group. 

The Ronin bridge is not the only victim of Lazarus Group over the past few weeks. DeFiance Capital founder Arthur Cheong reported losing $1.7 million worth of NFTs to a phishing scam perpetrated by state-sponsored North Korean hackers in early March. He has since warned that North Korean-linked hackers are directly targeting crypto organizations using a range of complex social engineering attacks. 

The Ronin network is an Ethereum sidechain that hosts the popular play-to-earn game Axie Infinity. The Ronin bridge connects Ronin to Ethereum mainnet, allowing players to transfer funds between the two networks. Users can also deposit funds into the bridge to provide liquidity and earn swap fees. Axie Infinity creator Sky Mavis recently raised $150 million in a funding round led by Binance to help reimburse those who lost money in the hack.

Disclosure: At the time of writing this piece, the author owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.