The great success story in crypto-gaming is “Axie Infinity,” a game from 2018 by a Vietnamese studio. The NFT game has some similarities with the Pokémon franchise: the focus is on trading and breeding creatures known as Axie. But now there has been a major heist: hackers stole cryptocurrency worth 550 million Euros.
What kind of game is this?
- Axie Infinity is a huge game in parts of Asia: there are people who support their families with the game. The developer behind Axie Infinity, who was 19 years old at the time, fell in love with CryptoKitties and thought it was so cool that he mixed elements from that game with the gameplay of Pokémon: thus came Axie Infinity.
- Anyone wanting to start with the free-to-play game needs the cryptocurrency Ethereum, must buy in-game currency with it, and then initially purchase 3 of the creatures, Axie. A few years ago, they were quite cheap. As the game became more popular, the entry price to be able to play Axie Infinity increased continuously. In February 2022, the price was already about $87 (via stealthoptional).
- In the game, there are always opportunities to invest more money, but also to earn money. Axie Infinity is a pioneer of a wave of “Pay to earn” games that some studios like Ubisoft are now excited about. With cryptocurrencies and NFTs, players are now supposed to be able to earn money with games – the studios behind the games also expect to profit from this. Players and developers repeatedly voice harsh criticism of this trend.
What did the hackers steal? As the “Ronin Network” states in a blog post, hackers managed to withdraw money through an exploit at Axie Infinity:
- 25.5 million USDC – this is a crypto coin pegged to the US dollar
- 173,600 units of the currency Ethereum – that’s about 590 million US dollars. By the way, the currency was invented by a disappointed WoW nerd
You arrive at a value of around 550 million Euros.
Network granted gaming studio special rights due to the hype surrounding the game
How was the hack possible? As the network explains, Axie Infinity was ultimately too successful in recent years.
In November 2021, there was such a rush for Axie Infinity that the Ronin Network granted the developer Sky Mavis special permission to conduct transactions more easily. This was done at the request of Sky Mavis.
This allegedly made it possible for attackers to carry out this major hack when they gained access to the systems of Sky Mavis. The game’s own popularity thus became its downfall.
The token of the Ronin network behind Axie Infinity fell by about 20% following the revelation of the hack.
What happens next? The Ronin Network says it wants to protect itself from further attacks and is now working with various government agencies to ensure that “the criminals are brought to justice.”
The US site Kotaku, which is very critical of NFTs, can’t resist the comment that NFT companies always boast of their incredible security, only to repeatedly report on these expensive heists and hacks.
In fact, we at MeinMMO have also repeatedly reported on scams related to NFTs:
People invest fortunes in virtual NFT apes – developers scam them out of €2.3 million
