Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis raises $150M to reimburse victims of Ronin hack

Sky Mavis, the developer of the popular NFT game Axie Infinity, announced that it has raised $150 million in a funding round led by Binance, with Animoca Brands, a16z, Dialectic, and Paradigm also participating. 

The company said the round combined with Sky Mavis balance sheet funds, will be used to reimburse user funds affected by the Ronin Validator Hack, one of the biggest thefts in the sector’s 13-year history where hackers stole 173,600 Ethereum and $25.5M worth of the stablecoin USDC.

Sky Mavis said 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 is supporting the Ronin Network by providing ETH withdrawals and deposits for Axie Infinity users, allowing most of them to operate freely. 

“The 56,000 ETH compromised from the Axie DAO treasury will remain undercollateralized 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 next steps for the treasury. We believe that Axie will go down in history as the first game to imbue players with true digital property rights and recent events have only strengthened this conviction,” the company said. 

“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 we address this issue, we are also focusing on the future, starting with tomorrow’s launch of Axie Infinity: Origin.  We are also thrilled to collaborate with Binance NFT on future projects,” said Sky Mavis CEO Trung Nguyen.

Underlining that despite the recent setback, Axie and Ronin continue to maintain their dominant position in the NFT gaming arena, Sky Mavis said that Axie is the most played NFT game of all time with 2.2 million monthly active users, and has processed 10x more all-time volume than the 2nd largest NFT game.