Axie Infinity makers raise $150m to repay victims of massive crypto hack
Sky Mavis, the company behind the popular Axie Infinity game, has raised $150m (£113m) from to repay the victims of a massive hack.
Hackers stole more than $600m from the Ronin network, a Sky Mavis bridge protocol, in one of the largest crypto hacks to date. The round was led by Binance and included existing backers including Andreessen Horowitz, Animoca Brands and Accel.
“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 chief executive Changpeng “CZ” Zhao.
“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,” Zhao added.
On 23 March, nodes which validate transactions on the Ronin Bridge and Axie Infinity network were compromised resulting in 173,600 Ethereum (£427m) and 25.5m USDC (£19m) being drained by hackers. The exploit was not discovered by the company until six days later.
Sky Mavis said it is committed to reimbursing all its users who lost funds through the attack and is working with law enforcement to recover some $200m that was stolen from Axie Infinity treasury revenues from the monster-hunting game.
“Sky Mavis is committed to reimbursing all of our users’ lost funds and implementing rigorous internal security measures to prevent future attacks,” commented Trung Nguyen, the chief executive of Sky Mavis.
Nguyen said the number of validators needed to sign off on transactions will be increased from five to 21 “with the support of Binance and other industry leaders.”
“While we address this issue, we are focusing on the future,” Nguyen added, revealing Sky Mavis is collaborating with Binance’s NFT arm on future projects.
Read more: Hackers pilfer $600m from Ronin Network in massive crypto attack