Sky Mavis, the Vietnam-based company behind the game axie infinity, revealed that a hacker stole hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crypto from its blockchain. Sky Mavis realized it had been attacked when a user could not make a withdrawal six days after the breach.

At nearly the same time, it’s launching a new version of the game, axie infinity: origin. Sky Mavis CEO Trung Nguyen:’we have made an intentional decision to focus on what lies ahead’.

The list includes crypto exchange binance, web3-promoting venture capital firm A16Z, and Animoca brands, which owns the sandbox.

Sky Mavis plans to reopen the system after it undergoes a security upgrade and audits to try and detect if there are other weaknesses. binance, which just invested in the game, has reopened transactions with the network.

The sky Mavis team is committed to making players whole using their own funds combined with the investments. The 56,000 ether nicked from the axie infinity DAO’s Treasury will remain’undercollateralized’ while the company and law enforcement try to get the crypto back.

As far as the stolen funds, about 168k ether remain in the wallet where the thief or thieves left them. Law enforcement organizations are focusing on the source of funds even more carefully.

The Internet has been hit by an exploiter’s report by the Wall Street Journal cites the CEO of bug bounty platform immunefi saying that moving this much money through a tumbler could take years. Industry watchers continue to post alerts in real time as small fractions of the stolen crypto shift out of the thief’s account to other wallets.

The system will expand the number of validator nodes on its proof-of-stake blockchain network over the next three months from five to 21. Having fewer nodes to review transactions makes things faster and more efficient.

We thank everyone in the community for their patience. We re-created the battle system from scratch to be more fun, beautiful, and engaging.

Prior to the hack, axie infinity was already suffering from a 45-percent drop in daily active users. Operators had to cut the amount of SLP tokens players could earn through PVE play each day.

Axie infinity: origin will invite players to take on the fun role of’land barons’. About 40 percent are in the Phillippines, where many rely on it as a full-time job.

Free axies do n’t allow participation in the’- earn’ game. It’s a way for people to try out the game without having to buy an NFT character or rent one from a manager player who leases access in exchange for a cut of earnings.