Sky Mavis, the Vietnamese gaming firm behind play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, said Thursday it has raised $150 million funding round led by Binance to restore funds on the Ronin Bridge.

The round also saw the participation of Animoca Brands, a16z, Dialectic, Paradigm and Accel, according to a statement.

The fund will be used to reimburse user funds affected by the Ronin Validator Hack.

On March 23, Sky Mavis’ Ronin validator nodes and Axie DAO validator nodes were compromised resulting in 173,600 Ethereum (ETH) and 25.5 million USD coin (USDC) drained from the Ronin bridge. The attack was socially engineered, and a thorough investigation is ongoing. The root cause of the breach was the small validator set which made it much easier to compromise the network. Sky Mavis will onboard up to 21 validators within the next three months, which will be a split between various stakeholders in the Axie community, and will together manage an open-source codebase.

The new round, combined with Sky Mavis 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. 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 undercollateralized 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 next steps for the treasury.

“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. 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,” said Binance Chief Executive Officer Changpeng Zhao.

With the largest non fungible token (NFT) gaming ecosystem by total traded volume, Axie Infinity has contributed to accelerating the mass adoption of NFT gaming platforms. Axie Infinity’s scalability can be attributed to Sky Mavis’ underlying infrastructures which include The Mavis Hub, the distribution platform; Ronin, the proprietary Ethereum sidechain; and Katana, a decentralized exchange for Ronin.

“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,” said Trung Nguyen, Chief Executive Officer of Sky Mavis.

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