Axie Infinity sales bounce back after $620m hack

Play-to-earn game Axie Infinity is seeing a return of users, with NFT sales tripling after a recent US$620 million hack prompted it to pause the operations of its Ethereum sidechain Ronin Bridge.

Photo credit: velivinki / 123RF

Jeffrey Zirlin, co-founder of Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis, said in a tweet that daily sales of Axies had reached 22,000 earlier this month, an over 3x surge from 7,000 a few weeks prior.

“Nature is healing,” he quipped, referring to the pandemic-born meme.

Zirlin added that the game’s new update – Axie Infinity: Origin – was also getting more downloads and that the company’s Land staking offering was seeing high activity. The co-founder also highlighted that the Ronin Bridge is operational again.

The Ronin Bridge suffered a security breach in March, resulting in the theft of 173,600 ether and about US$25.5 million in USDC stablecoins, worth a total of around US$620 million at the time. This made the incident one of the largest crypto hacks in history.

Sky Mavis temporarily shut down the sidechain after the breach and raised US$150 million from Binance, Animoca Brands, Andreessen Horowitz, Dialectic, and Paradigm to help pay back users affected by the hack.

Though the increase in sales makes Axie Infinity the 18th highest-selling NFT project in the past week, the game has reportedly been on a downward trend since late 2021, with lower trading volumes and the game’s token seeing sharp drops in value.

See also: Axie Infinity players are using SLPs in real life