Axie Infinity creator raises $150M led by Binance to reimburse stolen funds

cointelegraph.com:

Sky Mavis, the creator of the popular play-to-earn nonfungible token game Axie Infinity has raised $150 million in a new funding round led by Binance. 

The fundraiser is aimed at reimbursing lost funds from the recent exploit on Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge, resulting in losses of over $600 million. The funding round also saw participation from Animoca Brands, a16z, Dialectic, Paradigm and Accel.

As Cointelegraph reported earlier, the explorer behind the hack managed to drain out 173,600 Ethereum (ETH) and 25.5 million USD Coin (USDC) in just two transactions using hacked private keys. At the time, the creators behind the NFT game had promised that they would either try to recover all the lost funds or reimburse users with the help of their investors.

Apart from the $150M raised funds, the remaining amount would be reimbursed from Sky Mavis and Axie Infinity’s balance sheet. The developers have also identified that a small validator set on Axie DAO was the root cause behind the exploit and they have decided to increase the number of validator groups to 21 in the next three months.

The developers behind the project estimate that it could take several weeks before Ronin bridge becomes active again, as they are working on the security update and subsequent audits before re-opening it for users. In the meantime, Binance is helping Axie Inifitny users to deposit and withdraw ETH on the Ronin network.

Related: Axie Infinity (AXS) price reverses course with 50%+ gain ahead of Origin launch

If the stolen funds are not recovered within two years, the Axie DAO would vote for the next steps for its treasury. Binance and Sky Mavis didn’t respond to requests for comments from Cointelegraph at the time of publishing,

Many in the crypto