Site navigation

Axie Infinity Company Receives $150m Investment to Recover from Crypto-heist

Michael Behr

,

Axie Infinity
The funding will help reimburse people hit by the heist, which saw hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of assets stolen.

The company behind Ronin Networks and Axie Infinity, which was hit by a major cryptocurrency heist last month, has received a $150 million investment led by crypto-exchange Binance.

Vietnamese company Sky Mavis is the company behind Ronin Network, an Ethereum-linked sidechain used to support the company’s play-to-earn videogame Axie Infinity.

In addition to receiving funds from Binance, the funding round also saw participation from Animoca Brands, a16z, Dialectic, and Paradigm.

Ronin Networks was at the centre of one of the largest cryptocurrency heists ever, where a hacker stole tokens worth an estimated $540 million.

The company revealed the attack on the 29th of March, six days after it took place, explaining how the attack was able to exploit its network and transfer 173,600 ether and 25.5 million in the stablecoin USDC.

Around $400m of these funds belonged to people who won the digital coins playing Axie Infinity.

In the video game, which has millions of players around the world, gamers can stage battles between cartoon monsters called Axies with the potential to win cryptocurrency tokens and NFTs.

To perform the transfer, the attacker used hacked private keys to forge withdrawals, moving the tokens to wallets they controlled.

According to the company, the root cause of the breach was the small validator set used to access its network. The company uses nine validator nodes to approve a deposit or withdrawal. However, only five of the nine nodes needed signatures to validate a transfer.

As such, the hacker managed to gain control over Sky Mavis’s four Ronin Validators and a third-party validator run by Axie DAO.

“While racing for mainstream adoption, we made some trade-offs that ended up leaving us vulnerable to this sort of attack. It’s a lesson that we’ve learned the hard way,” the company said in a statement.

With the new funding, the company noted that customers who had their assets stolen will be reimbursed. Additional funds will come from Sky Mavis’s cash reserves.

“Sky Mavis is committed to reimbursing all of our users’ lost funds and implementing rigorous internal security measures to prevent future attacks,” said Sky Mavis CEO Trung Nguyen.

“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.”


Recommended


The company said that it addressed the incident once it became known and was taking steps to guard against future attacks. It also said it was working with cybersecurity groups Chainalysis, to monitor the stolen funds, and Crowdstrike, to handle forensics and the setup of surveillance tools.

According to Sky Mavis, the Ronin Network bridge will be reopened once it has undergone a security upgrade and several audits. This could potentially take several weeks.

“In order for the global ecosystem to continue thriving and maturing, it is imperative that we work together, especially when it comes to security, which is our strong suit,” said Binance CEO Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao.

“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.”


Get the latest news from DIGIT direct to your inbox

Our newsletter covers the latest technology and IT news from Scotland and beyond, as well as in-depth features and exclusive interviews with leading figures and rising stars.

To subscribe, click here.

Michael Behr

Senior Staff Writer

Latest News

AI

Nvidia Launches Open Secure AI Alliance for AI Safety and Security

AI Business Recruitment

Nearly a Quarter of Orgs Reducing Entry-level Hiring Due to AI Automation

Business

Scottish Businesses Turn to Self-funding as Growth Confidence Dips in H2

Data Finance

Payment Leaders are Struggling to Get Real-time Data