Axie Infinity Delays Launch of ‘Origin’ Game Following Massive Hack

Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis is delaying the launch of its highly anticipated “Origin” upgrade from March 30 to April 7 after hackers stole $625 million from the underlying Ronin blockchain earlier in the week.

“While the game is ready for soft launch, we’ve decided to give the engineering and security team an additional window of time to deeply investigate all implications of the breach, before asking for their full attention to support Origin’s release,” Sky Mavis wrote on its Substack.
Sky Mavis has pledged to reimburse players who lost funds in the exploit. The attacker found a backdoor in a Ronin node and then used hacked private keys to create withdrawals. The losses included 173,600 ether (ETH) and $25.5 million in USDC.
The exploit was one of the largest in decentralized finance history.

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