Sky Mavis Raises $150M Round Led by Binance to Reimburse Ronin Attack Victims

Sky Mavis, the firm behind hit play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, raised a $150 million round led by Binance to reimburse user funds lost in the $625 million Ronin attack, the firm said on Wednesday.

• Venture capital firm a16z, Dialectic, Paradigm and Accel also participated in the round. The funds from the new round as well as Sky Mavis and Axie Infinity's balance sheets will ensure affected users are reimbursed, the gaming firm said.
• On March 23, validator nodes on Sky Mavis’ Ronin network and on Axie decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) were compromised, Sky Mavis said. The attacker used hacked private keys in order to forge fake withdrawals from the Ronin bridge across two transactions and was able to drain a total of 173,600 ether ETH$3,128.88 and 25.5 million USDC.
• The Ronin attacker had pulled off the exploit by obtaining five of the nine validator keys that are responsible for securing the Ronin network. By holding a majority of the keys, the attacker was able to maliciously withdraw piles of cryptocurrency straight from the Ronin Bridge into a rogue Ethereum wallet.
• "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," Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said.
• Binance also said on Wednesday that it has fully resumed deposits and withdrawals on the Ronin network after closing then partially resuming the service last week.
• The attacker behind one of the biggest crypto hacks to date, had apparently moved 2000 ether to privacy tool Tornado Cash earlier this week.

Read more: Ronin Attack Shows Cross-Chain Crypto Is a ‘Bridge’ Too Far

UPDATE (April 6, 11:57 UTC) : Adds details from the hack in third bullet. Adds comment from Binance CEO and background in fourth, fifth and sixth bullets.