Sky Mavis is the company behind Axie Infinity, and after a recent heist that saw it lose over $600 million, the company is raising funds to reimburse users
Sky Mavis: An embattled Company
The last few days have been some of the worse for the Sky Mavis team; a heist was targeted at this company, and by the end of the attack, an estimated $625 million in crypto was stolen from its users. No company wants to ever have to deal with a financial breach because the stigma, backlash, and distrust by members of the public linger long after the episode.
What made the Sky Mavis heist more of a PR nightmare for the company was that the hacker was in the company’s system for a considerable amount of time before anybody on the team realized that they were compromised.
Users may look to the fact that hackers were inside the company’s system for a lengthy period and deduce that the company hasn’t done enough to make its system safe to transact on and interact with. That being said, the feeling within the Sky Mavis team must be one of despair, and all we can hope for is that the company has solid crisis management and employee stress management processes in place to help the company come out on top.
After the hack, the company pledged to try to recover lost funds or reimburse users with the help of external capital.
Crisis Management at its finest
Since the heist, we can fault Sky Mavis for many things, but one thing that we cannot say is that they have handled the situation poorly. It seems like recovering stolen funds isn’t an option at this point, so Sky Mavis is going for the second option.
You may recognize Sky Mavis as the creators of Axie Infinity, a famous NFT game. The company has successfully raised $150 million in an impromptu funding round led by Binance, and this money is geared towards helping reimburse victims of Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge.
The funding round saw participation by a few seasoned industry players, including Animoca Brands, Accel, Paradigm, Dialectic, and a16z. After reimbursing victims with the $150 million, Sky Mavis will raise money from its balance sheet to cover the rest of the payments.
Members of the community suspected that a crypto activist stole the funds, and they’ll return the funds similar to how the “Poly network hacker” returned stolen funds, but that doesn’t seem to be the case yet.
What does the future hold for Axie Infinity?
After identifying a minute Validator set on Axie DAO as the weak link that caused the heist, the company has decided to increase validator groups to 21 over the next three months. Realistically, it may take a few weeks before the Ronin Bridge is activated again, but in the meantime, users can deposit and withdraw ETH on the Ronin network through Binance.
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