Vietnamese studio Sky Mavis has raised $150 million in a funding round led by Binance. The money raised in this funding round will be used to reimburse users who lost money in the recent attack on the Ronin network.
Ronin network, the Ethereum based sidechain for the studio’s NFT game Axie Infinity recently lost $600 million in a Ronin Validator Hack.
The funds raised in this latest funding round along with Sky Mavis’ balance sheet funds will be used to reimburse users who lost money in the attack.
“Sky Mavis is committed to reimbursing all of our users’ lost funds and implementing rigorous internal security measures to prevent future attacks”, said Trung Nguyen, CEO of Sky Mavis.
Apart from Binance, the funding round saw participation from Animoca Brands, a16z, Dialectic, and Paradigm.
Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance said, “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.”
The attack on the Ronin network took place on March 23 resulting in a loss of 173,600 Ethereum and 25.5 million USDC being drained from the Ronin bridge. It was 6 days later that the team found out about the breach of the Sky Mavis’ Ronin validator nodes and Axie DAO validator nodes.
Sky Mavis has also announced plans to use the money raised to increase its validator groups to 21 within the next three months. The validator groups will be distributed among various stakeholders including partners, community members, and long-term allies.
“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,” said Trung.
The Ronin Network Bridge will undergo a security upgrade and several rounds of auditing before coming online again. Until then, Binance will provide ETH withdrawals and deposits for Axie Infinity users.
Sky Mavis has also clarified that the 56,000 ETH stolen from the Axie DAO treasury will remain undercollateralized. In case the funds are not fully recovered within the next two years, the Axie DAO members will vote on what to do next.
In a step towards catching the perpetrators of this massive attack, the on-chain data linked to addresses used in the exploitation shows that the attacker moved around 1,400 Ether to Tornado Cash. It is still, however, a long way before the attackers are caught and brought to justice.
