Sky Mavis bags $150m to refund users hit by Axie hack

Sky Mavis, developer of popular play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, has raised US$150 million in a funding round led by Binance, and joined by Animoca Brands, a16z, Dialectic, and Paradigm. The fresh funds – along with funds from Sky Mavis’ balance sheet – will be used to reimburse all users affected by the US$620 million hack on the Ronin Network, the company’s official sidechain wallet.

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This would mean that the company would have to fork out about US$470 million in refunds to its affected users. However, the company didn’t disclose how much it would pull from its balance sheet for the reimbursements.

Last week, the Ronin Network suffered a security breach that resulted in the theft of 173,600 ether and about US$25.5 million in USDC stable coins. The stolen tokens sum up to US$620 million, making it possibly the largest crypto hack of all time.

On the question of recovering the funds from the hacker, the company said 56,000 ether compromised from the treasury of the Axie decentralized autonomous organization will remain undercollateralized as it 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,” said the company in a statement.

Sky Mavis said that it will open the Ronin Network bridge once it has undergone a security upgrade and several audits, which can take several weeks. In the meantime, Binance will support the Ronin Network by allowing Axie Infinity users to withdraw and deposit ether, allowing most of them to operate freely.

The firm is also is in the process of implementing rigorous internal security measures to prevent future attacks.

See also: Sky Mavis’ probable next steps after $612m hack

One of those security measures was implemented earlier today. Sky Mavis has added five new organizations to its validator node pool: Nansen, Delphi Digital, Stable Node, Animoca Brands, and Dialectic. The additional Ronin validators will add more layers of defense for the platform. Sky Mavis expects the move to be completed within this week.

This comes soon after at least 2,000 ether (nearly US$7 million) from the Ronin Network hack were transferred to privacy mixer service Tornado Cash – a move that typically prevents cryptocurrencies from being tracked and frozen.