Binance has led a $150 million fundraising round for Sky Mavis, the creator of Axie Infinity, a popular play-to-earn nonfungible token game, the fund will be used to refund users who lost money in the recent hack.
The fundraising aims to recoup funds lost as a result of the recent exploit on Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge, which resulted in a $600 million loss. Animoca Brands, a16z, Dialectic, Paradigm, and Accel also participated in the fundraising round.
Using compromised private keys, the explorer behind the breach was able to drain 173,600 Ethereum (ETH) and 25.5 million USD Coin (USDC) in just two transactions.
The Reimbursing
The NFT game’s founders had stated at the time that they would either try to recover all of the lost monies or reimburse users using their investors’ funds.
The remaining amounts would be reimbursed by Sky Mavis and Axie Infinity’s bank sheet, aside from the $150 million raised. The exploit’s developers have also recognized a tiny validator set on Axie DAO as the source of the problem, and have planned to raise the number of validator groups to 21 in the next three months.
The Ronin Bridge may not be operational for several weeks, according to the project’s developers, who are working on a security update and following audits before reopening it to users. Binance is assisting Axie Infinity users with depositing and withdrawing ETH on the Ronin Network in the meantime.
The Axie DAO will decide on the next actions for its treasury if the stolen funds are not recovered within two years. At the time of publication,Â
Many in the crypto world believed that, like the exploiter of the Poly Network, the hacker behind the Ronin Bridge exploit would eventually return the monies. There hasn’t been any evidence of such communication between game developers and hackers before recently.
In an attempt to launder stolen assets, the Axie Infinity exploiter account has begun sending funds to currency mixer services such as Tornado Cash. However, it’s worth noting that the Poly Network exploiter did the same at first but finally decided to return the funds as laundering such a large sum got increasingly impossible.
