In one of the largest theft of crytocurrency on record, hackers made off with more than $600 million on the popular video game Axie Infinity in an attack uncovered Tuesday, the Washington Post reports.
The thieves broke into the underlying blockchain, Ronin, used by Axie Infinity and siphon funds from gamers’ accounts. Sky Mavis, the company that runs both Axie Infinity and Ronin, said it only discovered the breach Tuesday. The hackers made off with 174,000 ETH, the Ethereum bitcoin.
As the Washington Post writers explained (because I haven’t a clue how to interpret this): “Axie Infinity uses a ‘play-to-earn’ system that combines finance and gaming, powered by NFTs, unique tokens that can be traced back to a user. Players buy creature-centric NFTs to gain entry into the game, and then spend more crypto to acquire and breed various beasts they can deploy in battles. The NFTs have both in-universe and real-world value, adding a kind of digital-money buzz to traditional gameplay.”