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$625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

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Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#181

This wallet contains the $625M funds in what appears to be the largest crypto defi hack in history. https://etherscan.io/address/0x098b716b8aaf21512996dc57eb061...

For now. Cryptocurrency hacks are like EVE Online news, where there would be a story every few months about a massive heist totaling tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars of real-world currency, or yet another bigger battle that destroyed enough vessels equivalent to that amount. Just people outdoing themselves every time.

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#182

> All of the AXS, RON, and SLP on Ronin are safe right now. Of course they are. They're worthless.

Surprisingly, AXS and SLP are only down about 6% on Coinbase. So, sell now before it's too late. They've both been going down for months, anyway.

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when it comes to banking, random checking accounts are hacked into very rarely. to the point that in USA the FDIC is protecting your account up to $250,000. I don't recall last time seeing news on someone's bank account being hacked and drained, if anything its mostly family fraud. also there are all sorts of checks when you try to wire or withdraw more than $10,000, not to mention wire hundreds of millions. Such tra…

> I don't recall last time seeing news on someone's bank account being hacked and drained, if anything its mostly family fraud. Anecdote time. My wife and I have a shared checking account that got hacked and drained. First her debit card got skimmed. Then the perp called USAA a half dozen times claiming to be her and asking for account credentials. Finally they got a helpful account rep to reset the password, disable…

I just want to point out that this comment is exactly why social engineering is a problem. You have been a victim of what happens when a company doesn't put in enough effort to verify the identity of the person they have on the phone. Yet when that company starts putting in that effort, you object and call it a "punishment".

Convenience and security are often in direct competition with each other. Almost all of us would expect convenience in this situation. You should know better more than most the cost of choosing convenience and even you want that convenience. Is there any wonder why businesses select convenience over security?

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't insured for $650M in a bank account

You have a legal system available, and banks that have to rigorously comply with that system.

This is true about cryptocurrency as well.

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#185
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there are people in the world who can wake up and have lost all money they had deposited in a bank. There are people who have to pay 20% transfer fees to move money overseas. There are people who don't have the ability to open a bank account. There are people who can lose all their banked money if their government doesn't like them. The first world doesn't have these problems. Crypto is a bigger play than 'ge…

Where in the world is it common to lose all money deposited in a bank? And, why not just create better banks?

Entire world in late 1920s, Iceland in 2008,Russia currently.

Of course my examples are a bit tongue in cheek, much more nuanced and not as "Bank bad" as I paint them to be. But It's entirely possible for a bank run/economic downturn to wipe out a currency overnight.

Does that mean crypto is the solution? It sure doesn't seem to be given cases like this (NFT/ETH being rugpulled from/by videogame devs). But I think that creating "better banks" can only mean "more government oversight", which leads right back to the original problem IE; economic/political factors having too much control.

I of course keep all my money in the form of expired New Hampshire State Highway toll tokens.

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all well and good when the thieves are in the US or a country that will extradite them. What happens when the thieves are operating out of a country without an extradition treaty? In the regular financial world you can at least reverse the transaction. With crypto, is there anything you can do?

In principle if you had enough desire among world governments you could plausibly try and legally force a blockchain fork.

Even if that is desired and wouldn't spark a philosophical debate about wether centralized entities should get involved at all, there is a much deeper problem.

Every transaction that is occurring now on the chain will be invalidated.

That means you can't even reverse a single transaction you will have to reverse one transaction and ALL other transactions that happened after the one you want to reverse.

If that happens too often why would I want to to transact on a chain that is under constant threat to be forked off?

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#187
post #150

Can someone attempt to explain or speculate at what the attacker is doing with their wallet right now? https://etherscan.io/txs?a=0x098b716b8aaf21512996dc57eb0615e... As I write this at about 17:00 UTC, they seem to be doing lots of small transactions (about $1 USD), and they are coming "From" many different places, but only showing "To" the "Ronin Bridge Exploiter". I don't understand this stuff well enough to see w…

You can read the messages in those transactions by choosing "view input as...". Pretty funny actually:

> Hi. Please donate to innocent Russians population who are being punished! Help Innocent People ($HIP). We are supporting orphans and Ukrainian refugees.

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x25d6e35669f2143ab2efaba96aacd54314...

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#188
post #31

I'm out of the loop and trying to understand - people lent over half a billion dollars of their 'real' fake money (ETH) to a game studio so they could transact on the studio's sidechain because gas fees are prohibitively expensive on ETH, and then the game studio got hacked and lost it all? How was this ever going to end any other way? Imagine how preposterous the idea of storing $650mm in USD in a random game studio…

No post body was provided.

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#189
post #127
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving $650mm in USD to a random company is still infinitely safer than doing so with crypto. If a regulated bank claims they got hacked and lost that amount, there are a slew of federal and state laws and agencies in place to investigate it. With crypto, it could very well be in the wallet of the CEO or IT guy and no one would know.

Unlike traditional banks with their burdensome regulations and gate-keepers, the permissionless, decentralized nature of the blockchain means that they can't get the money back.

The increased risk of total loss in the edge case is in exchange for a more efficient system with lower prices in the average case. Individual users should make an informed decision about the tradeoff.

See also http://go/hackernews/item?id=30838572 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80...

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#190
post #47

In a system run by people, the transaction could be reversed, traced, and the culprits eventually brought to justice. In a system run by algorithms, designed to avoid oversight by people (governments), there is no such powers. There's no reversal. There's no checking the name on the account the transfer was to. It's just gone. I do not understand why people who have legal intentions would want to be part of the crypt…

> There's nothing but more risks with zero benefits.

Risk has upside. That is the benefit.

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