Skymavis co-founders
Sky Mavis, the owner of the popular NFT game Axie Infinity, has announced a US$150 million funding round led by Binance with participation from Animoca Brands, a16z, Dialectic, Paradigm, and Accel Partners.
The round, combined with Sky Mavis balance sheet funds, will be used to reimburse all the users affected by the Ronin Validator hack, the Vietnamese company said in a statement.
On March 23, Sky Mavis’s Ronin validator nodes and Axie DAO validator nodes were compromised, resulting in 173,600 Ethereum and 25.5 million USDC drained from the Ronin bridge.
“The attack was socially engineered, and a thorough investigation is ongoing. We take full responsibility for the breach. The root cause of the breach was the small validator set which made it much easier to compromise the network,” the firm said. “While racing for mainstream adoption, we made some trade-offs that left us vulnerable to this sort of attack.”
Also Read: a16z leads Axie Infinity parent Sky Mavis’s US$152M Series B round
SKy Mavis added that the Ronin Network bridge will open once it has undergone a security upgrade and several audits, which could take several weeks. The firm is implementing rigorous internal security measures to prevent future attacks.
The 56,000 ETH compromised from the Axie DAO treasury will remain under-collateralised as Sky Mavis works with law enforcement to recover the funds. If the funds are not fully recovered within two years, the Axie DAO will vote on the next steps for the treasury.
“Sky Mavis is committed to reimbursing all of our users’ lost funds and implementing rigorous internal security measures to prevent future attacks. With the support of Binance and other industry leaders, we will be able to quickly expand the validator set from five to 21 validators to ensure the security of the Ronin network. While addressing this issue, we are also focusing on the future, starting with tomorrow’s launch of Axie Infinity: Origin,” said Sky Mavis CEO Trung Nguyen.
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