Sky Mavis, the developer of Axie Infinity, has recovered about $5.7 million from the Ronin Bridge hack with the help of the Norwegian government.

In a June 7 statement, the company announced:

"The Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (Økokrim) has successfully frozen and returned $5.7 million in stolen assets from the Ronin bridge incident."

The Ronin bridge, an Ethereum sidechain for Axie Infinity, was exploited in 2022, resulting in the theft of 173,600 Ethereum, valued at over $615 million at the time. Since then, efforts to recover the funds have seen limited success.

The attacker, allegedly the North Korea-backed Lazarus Group, has reportedly moved much of the stolen ETH through the crypto mixing service Tornado Cash.

$40 million frozen

Sky Mavis reported that various law enforcement agencies have frozen a total of $40 million linked to the incident. The company stated:

"These assets will take some time to recover, and we don't have enough information to provide a specific timetable for recovering and returning this separate pool of assets."

The recoveries were facilitated by the collaborative efforts of agencies such as the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), Økokrim, and blockchain forensic firm Chainalysis. Sky Mavis highlighted the crucial role of coordination among law enforcement, legal teams, accountants, and blockchain experts in retrieving the stolen funds.

Sky Mavis plans to use about 15% of the recovered funds to cover recovery costs, with the remaining 85% being returned to the Axie Infinity Treasury.

However, the asset recovery did not boost the prices of Axie Infinity’s AXS token or Ronin’s RON. According to CryptoSlate's data, the digital assets were down 1.09% and 2.65%, respectively, over the last 24 hours.