Axie Infinity creator has just raised $150 million in a funding round led by Binance.
The game’s developer, Sky Mavis, has announced a $150 million funding round led by Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges.
The new raise takes the total value of the company to $1.5 billion. The Binance-led funding also included Ethereum Foundation, OKCoin, and Arrington XRP Capital.
Ronin validator nodes and Axie DAO in March.
Other major investors in the funding are venture capitals a16z, Dialectic, crypto-focused investment firm Paradigm, and game software firm Animoca Brands.
Axie Infinity is a digital pet universe where players can own, breed, and battle pets. The game uses non-fungible tokens (NFTs) built on the Ethereum blockchain.
The game has been live since 2018 and currently has over 100,000 monthly active users.
According to Sky Mavis, the funds will be combined with those on the company’s book into the reimbursement plan for Axie Infinity players affected by the recent multimillion dollars hack.
In addition, this new funding will be used to grow the Axie community and ecosystem, as well as to build new features and experiences.
Still on the subject of refunds, the firm’s CEO Trung Nguyen says:
“Sky Mavis is dedicated to reimbursing all of our clients’ stolen money and adopting rigorous internal security measures to avoid future attacks.”
With this new funding round, Binance is now the largest shareholder in Axie Infinity.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said that they have confidence in the firm’s vision and are excited to help them grow the community and ecosystem around Axie Infinity.
Sky Mavis, the founder of Axie Infinity, said:
“We’re thrilled to have Binance leading our funds raising drive and to have such strong support from our current investors.
After the security checks are completed, the business will reopen the Ronin Network bridge that was hacked and robbed of 173,600 Ethereum (ETH) and $25.5 million in USDC.
The validator group of Ronin will be expanded from five to 21 in order to strengthen the network going forward.
The process will be finished by the end of the next three months, with partners and community members splitting the role of validators.
Despite the devastating hack, the Axie Infinity game is still the most popular and played NFT game.
Over two million people own Axie NFTs, with monthly active users currently at about two million.
It’s great to see Binance leading this charge as it affirms our belief in the team and project.
This fundraise allows us to continue executing on our vision while also increasing the rate of development.
We’re extremely grateful for the support from our current investors and excited to have Binance as a lead investor in this round.”
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) said that the firm sees a lot of potential in Axie Infinity and is happy.
We must collaborate to ensure the worldwide ecosystem continues to develop and mature, especially in terms of security, which is our specialty.
Since collaborating on the Axie Infinity project on Binance Launchpad, we have witnessed the Sky Mavis team’s incredible effort and development.
Sky Mavis, in our opinion, will provide a lot of value and expansion to the sector as a whole, and we feel that they deserve support as they strive to address the recent problem.
This incident has also led Binance to review its processes and we have identified areas where we can further improve.
We remain committed to protecting the interests of our users and will continue to work hard to provide a safe and secure platform for everyone.
