The developers of the popular blockchain game Axie Infinity have reportedly raised $150 million. They did this in a financing round led by the cryptocurrency exchange Binance.
fundraiser
The funding round, which is actually more like a fundraiser, is aimed at paying back the money lost. The video game was recently hit by a hack that resulted in the loss of more than $600 million in total. For example, a total of approximately 173,600 Ethereum (ETH) could be stolen and almost USD 26 million Coin tokens were stolen.
Earlier, the developers had already promised that they would do everything to get the stolen money back. Initially this would be without outside help, but now investors are helping anyway.
Binance Helps Developers Axie Infinity
The developers have since been able to determine that a small validator set on Axie DAO was the main cause behind the exploit used. As a result, it has been decided to increase the number of validator groups to 21 in the next three (3) months.
However, it is expected to take a while before the entire system can go live again. The developers expect the Ronin Bridge, where the exploit was found and abused. This is because the security update and subsequent audits are still in the works before it opens to users. In order to keep the Ronin network online and operational, Binance is now helping Axie Infinity users to deposit and withdraw ETH.
Money not yet returned by hacker
Many people believed that the hacker would eventually return the stolen funds, or at least some of them. This would be comparable to the Poly Network hacker, who managed to steal a similar amount. However, no evidence of such communication between the developers and the hacker(s) has yet been provided. It is expected that this will not be the case and that the hacker will walk away with the full 600 million dollars.
This is also partly reflected in the hacker’s account activities. For example, the Axie Infinity hacker has now started to move the funds to various mixers such as Tornado Cash. This is an attempt to launder the stolen money. It is worth noting that the Poly Network hacker carried out similar activities at the beginning, but in the end decided to return the funds.
It is of course not the easiest to launder such a large amount. However, it is currently too early to say whether the developers of Axie Infinity will see their stolen funds back, or at least some of them.