Sky Mavis CEO Moved about $3m in Crypto before Disclosing Hack: Bloomberg

blockchain.news:

The co-founder and CEO of Sky Mavis moved about $3 million in crypto tokens prior to the disclosure details of the $540 million Ronin bridge hack in March, Bloomberg reported.

The report stated that Trung Nguyen moved the funds as part of an effort to salvage the firm's funds following the attack. It added that these fund transfers were executed prior to the public announcement of the hack.

Sky Mavis is the studio behind the Axie Infinity blockchain game. 

Sky Mavis's spokesperson Kalie Moore claimed that it was a necessary move to stop short-sellers from frontrunning the sale of tokens once the hack was publicly announced.

The funds were transferred in a series from Axie-linked wallets tracked by a pseudonymous Axie user called Asobs. These wallets all moved funds off the Ronin sidechain to centralised exchanges like Binance after the hack occurred, The Block reported. According to the Bloomberg report, however, the company confirmed only the one identified by the Sky Mavis CEO.

The Ronin bridge hack took place in March 2022. During the hack, the attackers compromised five out of the nine validator keys on the project's Ronin sidechain. Following this, the hacker used these keys to siphon some $540 million worth of crypto from the project.

The Block has since revealed that a fake job advert was used as the attack vector in the exploit.

The crypto firm later raised funds to compensate victims of the attack. Sky Mavis also previously announced that reimbursement of affected users began on June 28.