Axie Infinity: Classic debuted yesterday and ends on June 24. The team confirmed in a statement that there would be no balance changes.
Season 21 of Classic will run simultaneously with the early-access version of Axie Origin, a major update that comes with new game modes, cards and traits. The overlap is designed to stress test Origin while players are still largely busy with Classic.
Ronin attack saga is far from over
The updates are part of Axie's ongoing efforts to restore their reputation following the infamous Ronin attack, one of the largest exploits in the history of DeFi. Orchestrated by a North Korean hacker collective Lazarus, the attack was initiated by a social engineering attack on Ronin and Axie DAO validator nodes.
In the end, the hackers stole 173,600 ETH and 25,5 million USDC. They are now hard at work trying to cash in as Binance, Etherscan and the crypto community work to track down and recover the stolen funds.
Axie’s parent company, Sky Mavis, managed to raise $150 million in a round led by Binance to reimburse affected users, the company said in a statement. According to Axie, the funding coupled with Sky Mavis' balance sheet should cover all reimbursements, but the company admitted that it could take weeks as they run a “security upgrade and several audits.”
Axie also plans to bolster the security of the network by growing the validator group to 21 nodes, including “partners, community members, and long-term allies.” The process is going to take three months – by which time Season 21 of Classic will be long gone.
