Sky Mavis has announced to reimburse all the victims in the $600 million that took place on 23 March. Binance confirmed it is leading the initial $150 million funding round with Animoca Brands, a16z, Dialectic, Paradigm and Accel also participating.
On 23 March, Sky Mavis’ Ronin and Axie DAO validator nodes were hacked. The hack led to a loss of 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC from the Ronin blockchain in two transactions (1 and 2).
What else was said?
The new round of funding along with the Sky Mavis balance sheet is expected to fully reimburse the entirety of the stolen amount. Sky Mavis also announced some of the new security measures to be put in place. The number of validators for a transaction is being increased from 5 to 21 to bolster threat aversion.
Trung Nguyen, CEO of Sky Mavis, said,
“Sky Mavis is committed to reimbursing all of our users’ lost funds and implementing rigorous internal security measures to prevent future attacks.”
As BloombergQuint reports, Binance is supporting the Ronin Network by providing Ether withdrawals and deposits for Axie Infinity users. It is expected the Ronin bridge will open once it has undergone a security upgrade and several audits, which can take several weeks.
How did the community react?
The announcement was received overwhelmingly by the Ronin community. According to data from Crypto Slam, there was a more than 400% (at press time) increase in NFT sales volume as seen below.
Source: CryptoSlam
Despite the setback, Axie has been able to maintain a dominant position in the NFT gaming space. They released some quick facts to indicate their stronghold in the market. Axie has processed 10x more all-time volume than the 2nd largest NFT game. With 2.2 million monthly active players, Axie is the most played NFT game of all time. Ronin has processed 3x more NFT trading volume than all other chains, barring Ethereum.
The funding along with the increased security measures is expected to drastically aid Axie’s growth in the NFT gaming sector.
