Sky Mavis Raises $150m To Refund Ronin Network Hack Victims

TL;DR Breakdown

• Sky Mavis has successfully raised $150 to aid the recompensation of victims of the Ronin Network Hack
• The game developers plan to upgrade the security on the Ronin Bridge

Sky Mavis, the company that developed Axie Infinity, has notified the public through a post on Substack, of a successful fundraiser that generated $150million to finance the recompensation plan for the affected parties of the Ronin Network heist – a theft of $620 million by a hacker.

The fundraiser was kickstarted by cryptocurrency investment platform, Binance, which was followed by engagement from some other companies. These are a16z, Dialectic, Animoca Brands, and Paradigm. The cash generated via the fundraising campaign is to contribute to making certain the total reimbursement of all money lost.

“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,” said the Founder of Binance, Changpeng Zhao.

Axie Infinity was developed and launched back in 2018. It was designed as a play-to-earn game(P2E) that utilizes non-fungible tokens(NFTs). Players obtain and mint NFTs which represent Axies – creatures that can be reared and used for combat while playing the game. Moreover, the NFTs are tradable on Sky Mavis Marketplace

Currently, the game boasts over 1.6 million players, and per data from CryptoSlam, its NFT collection is ranked as the most valuable with a sales volume of over $4 billion. Recently, its gaming network, Ronin, was penetrated by a hacker resulting in the theft of a huge amount of crypto assets.

Sky Mavis to implement new security protocols

The crypto heist was executed on Tuesday, March 23, 2022. Five out of nine validator nodes built to secure and verify transactions done by players on Ronin were compromised, which translated into the extraction of 173,600 ETH and $25.5 million worth of USDC over the Ronin Bridge. While game developers have accepted complete responsibility regarding the incident, they made mention that an investigation is underway.

After the cyberattack, Sky Mavis disabled the Ronin bridge, intending to reconnect it only after implementing the necessary security. As part of this security upgrade, more validator nodes will be added bringing the total number to 21, and the management of these nodes will be shared among different parties. Meanwhile, Binance has resumed its transactions with Ronin after temporarily suspending its service following the attack.