The company behind trailblazing NFT game Axie Infinity has raised $150 million to repay the victims of a massive hack.
On March 23rd, hackers stole more than $600m worth of Ethereum and USDC from the Ronin Network, a Sky Mavis bridge protocol, in an attack which was only discovered six days later.
The round was led by crypto exchange Binance and included existing backers Andreessen Horowitz, Animoca Brands and Accel, among the world’s most prominent VCs. It will restore funds on the Ronin Network – which for now remains closed – and ensure that all victims are reimbursed.
“The root cause of the breach was the small validator set which made it much easier to compromise the network,” read a statement from Binance. “Sky Mavis will onboard up to 21 validators within the next three months, which will be a split between various stakeholders in the Axie community, and will together manage an open-source codebase.”
The Ronin Network bridge will open once it has undergone a security upgrade and several audits, which can take several weeks. In the meantime, Binance has opened ETH/USDC withdrawals and deposits which will enable most users to withdraw and deposit.
Once the Ronin Network bridge is open, all individual users will be able to withdraw their funds.
With the largest NFT gaming ecosystem by total traded volume, Axie Infinity has contributed to accelerating the mass adoption of NFT gaming platforms.
“In order for the global ecosystem to continue thriving and maturing, it is imperative that we work together, especially when it comes to security, which is our strong suit,” said Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.
“We have seen the tremendous work and growth of the Sky Mavis team since working together on the Axie Infinity project on Binance Launchpad.
“We strongly believe Sky Mavis will bring a lot of value and growth for the larger industry and we believe it’s necessary to support them as they work hard to resolve the recent incident.”
Trung Nguyen, CEO of Sky Mavis, added: “Sky Mavis is committed to reimbursing all of our users’ funds and implementing rigorous internal security measures to prevent future attacks.
“With Binance supporting us, we will be able to expand the validator set from five to 21 on an expedited timeline, which ensures the security of the Ronin network. As a team, we have made an intentional decision to focus on what lies ahead, starting with tomorrow’s launch of Axie Infinity: Origin.
“We are also thrilled to collaborate with Binance NFT on future projects.”
In addition to the funding, Sky Mavis and Binance will work together closely on projects that include exclusive Land NFT sales and enable Binance login via The Mavis Hub.