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- Axie Infinity CEO Nguyen Thanh Trung found out about the massive hack while he was getting on a flight and couldn’t do a thing about it.
- He says he burst into tears upon receiving the news and that what angered him the most was the hackers’ greed.
Axie Infinity grabbed headlines for the wrong reason a few weeks ago after hackers attacked its Ronin bridge and made away with over $600 million in Ether and USDC, one of the biggest heists in crypto history. CEO and founder Nguyen Thanh Trung has addressed the hack for the first time, claiming that he burst into tears upon receiving the news.
As CNF reported, the hackers targeted the Ronin bridge, which Sky Mavis, the developer of the very popular play-to-earn (P2E) game, used to pass funds from Ronin, an Ethereum sidechain, to Ethereum. Sky uses Ronin since the base layer, Ethereum, is too slow and expensive to make gaming transactions on. Since the attack, more information has emerged, including that it’s most likely Lazarus, a hacking group that’s related to the North Korean government, which was behind the attack.
Read More: Axie Infinity’s Ronin Network hacked, over $600M siphoned from the platform
In a forum on Thursday, Nguyen talked about the hack for the first time, claiming that what angered him the most was the greed of the hackers.
I was getting on a plane when my chief technology officer called about the hack. I could not do much immediately as the flight was about to take off. I was upset and angry because of the thieves’ greed. This is the money of many players and investors and could have a direct impact on their lives.
Nguyen says that when he got home and saw his family all happy, unaware that his thriving cryptocurrency empire had faced the biggest blow it will most likely ever face, he broke down.
I couldn’t control my emotions and burst into tears.
Over the next few days, he worked non-stop together with his team to deal with the aftermath of the hack, even as the at least two million daily active players expressed anger at the laxity in the security of the platform. Nguyen says that the top priority for him at the time was the stability of his team. The 30-year-old decided that he and his team must march forward and defy the hackers’ attempt to bring down the world’s most popular blockchain game.
None of our team members wanted to stop. To keep moving forward, we have to maintain our trustworthiness and pay back our users.
Related: After the $600m Axie Infinity hack, it’s the small gamers that took the biggest hit
