Sky Mavis raises $150 million to compensate affected Ronin Bridge users

Sky Mavis, the publisher of play-to-earn blockchain game Axie Infinity, has raised $150 million, led by Binance, to reimburse users who were impacted by the attack on Ronin network in which cryptos worth $625 million were stolen last month. 

Validators are responsible for authoring and validating blocks, updating price oracles, and approving deposits and transfers of assets (ETH, ERC20, and ERC721) to and from Ronin. 

On 23 March, Sky Mavis’ Ronin validator nodes and Axie DAO validator nodes were compromised resulting in 173,600 Ethereum and 25.5 million USDC drained from the Ronin Bridge.

The company claims that the attack was socially engineered and the root cause of the breach was the small validator set which made it much easier to compromise the network.

Trung Nguyen, CEO of Sky Mavis, said: “Sky Mavis is committed to reimbursing all of our users’ funds and implementing rigorous internal security measures to prevent future attacks. With Binance supporting us, we will be able to expand the validator set from five to 21 on an expedited timeline, which ensures the security of the Ronin network.”

As a team, we have made an intentional decision to focus on what lies ahead, starting with tomorrow’s launch of Axie Infinity: Origin. We are also thrilled to collaborate with Binance NFT on future projects, he added.

Sky Mavis claims that the new round, combined with its balance sheet funds, will ensure that all users are reimbursed. The Ronin Network Bridge will open once it has undergone a security upgrade and several audits, which can take several weeks.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao maintained, “For the global ecosystem to continue thriving and maturing, we must work together, especially when it comes to security, which is our strong suit. We have seen the tremendous work and growth of the Sky Mavis team since working together on the Axie Infinity project on Binance Launchpad.”

In the meantime, Binance has opened ETH/USDC withdrawals and deposits which will enable most users to withdraw and deposit. Once the Ronin Network bridge is open, all individual users will be able to withdraw their funds. The 56,000 ETH compromised from the Axie DAO treasury will remain ‘under collateralised’ as Sky Mavis works with law enforcement to recover the funds. If the funds are not fully recovered within two years, the Axie DAO will vote on the next steps for the treasury.