Historical replay · AXS/USD
Axie Infinity's Ronin Bridge Hack (March 2022)
On March 23, 2022, attackers drained over $600 million from the Ronin bridge behind the play-to-earn game Axie Infinity — but the hack stayed hidden for six days before anyone noticed. Replay what happened to AXS once it finally came out.
On March 23, 2022, attackers exploited validator nodes on the Ronin sidechain — the infrastructure underpinning the play-to-earn game Axie Infinity — draining 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC, together worth more than $600 million at the time. It remains one of the largest crypto hacks ever recorded.
What makes this scenario particularly instructive is the six-day gap between the exploit and its discovery: the theft wasn't publicly disclosed until March 29, when a user reported being unable to withdraw funds from the bridge. Markets cannot price in information they don't have, and AXS traded essentially undisturbed through that entire window — the token only began sliding once the news actually became public.
From a close near $71.53 on March 25, AXS drifted down to $53.37 by April 6 — a decline of roughly 25% that built gradually across the following days rather than arriving as a single crash candle, as the market digested both the direct loss and the broader question of whether Ronin's operator, Sky Mavis, could make affected users whole (it ultimately did, with help from a large funding round led by Binance).