Cryptocurrency exchange Binance led a $150m funding round for Vietnam-based blockchain gaming developer Sky Mavis on Wednesday that included blockchain game developer Animoca Brands.
Andreessen Horowitz, Dialectic, Accel and Paradigm filled out the participants in the round, which came six months after Andreessen Horowitz led a $152m series B round that included Samsung Next – part of electronics producer Samsung – Accel, Paradigm and Seven Seven Six, valuing the company at $3bn.
Sky Mavis is the creator and operator of a play-to-earn game called Axie Infinity where players can use and earn non-fungible tokens. Axie Infinity was a pioneer in the gaming finance market, being the first game to let players earn real financial assets from playing video games.
Late last month, however, hackers targeted and hacked the bridge between the Ronin sidechain network – an Ethereum-based blockchain for Axie Infinity – and the Ethereum network itself, stealing more than 173,000 Ethereum tokens and 25.5 million USDC US dollar-linked stablecoins through fraudulent withdrawals.
The latest funding was raised to reimburse users affected by the hack. Sky Mavis said the Ronin Network Bridge will open again once security upgrades and audits have been carried out, which could take several weeks, and it will implement what it referred to as rigorous internal security measures to prevent future breaches.
The company said in a statement: “The attack was socially engineered, and a thorough investigation is ongoing. We take full responsibility for the breach. The root cause of the breach was the small validator set which made it much easier to compromise the network.
“While racing for mainstream adoption, we made some trade-offs that ended up leaving us vulnerable to this sort of attack. It is a lesson that we have learned the hard way. A lesson that will guide how we build Ronin out moving forward. We are confident that we will come out stronger and wiser from this.”
Animoca Brands took part in the company’s $7.5m series A round, which was led by Libertus Capital in May 2021.
Collab+Currency, BlockTower Capital, CMT Digital, Konvoy, Backed VC, Coingecko Ventures, Metacartel Ventures, Hashed, Pangea Blockchain Fund, 500 Startups, DeFi Alliance, Ace Cap, Free Company, Fabric Ventures, Sparq and Disruptoren filled out the round with individuals including Mark Cuban.
Sky Mavis had already secured $1.5m in a 2019 seed round led by Animoca Brands that included blockchain technology provider Consensys, 500 Startups, Hashed and Pangea Blockchain Fund.
Image courtesy of Sky Mavis.
