Axie Infinity Postpones Origin Launch Following Security Breach

Gaming Hack NFT Non-fungible tokens Security

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Ruholamin Haqshanas

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Ruholamin Haqshanas

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Ruholamin Haqshanas is a contributing crypto writer for CryptoNews. He is a crypto and finance journalist with over four years of experience. Ruholamin has been featured in several high-profile crypto...

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October 19, 2023

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Non-fungible token (NFT) and blockchain-based online video game Axie Infinity (AXS) has postponed a major update as the team seeks to fully investigate the implications of the recent security breach.

Axie Infinity: Origin, also known as Battles V3, is a new battle system that will feature fast-paced combat. The update was slated to go live today, but the team has postponed the launch date to April 7.

The team said in an announcement,

“While we had originally planned to launch Origin today, after yesterday’s security breach, we needed to reprioritize our efforts, and shift the launch date by one week.” 

They noted that the update is ready for launch, but they want to give the security and engineering team “an additional window of time to deeply investigate all implications of the breach.” 

In the meantime, the team would share “plenty of leeks” in the week leading up to launch, calling it the “Origin launch week.”

For March 31, the team has planned Origin Launch Contest and Neutral Runes and Charmes to be released on Axie Twitter and Discord, per the launch week schedule. 

The official gameplay trailer was released just yesterday. 

As reported, the gaming-focused Ronin bridge, which allows users to send crypto back and forth between Ethereum (ETH) and Axie’s Ronin sidechain, had been exploited to the tune of more than USD 600m.

Earlier this week, the Ronin Network detailed that ETH 173,600 and USDC 25.5m had been stolen, worth around USD 617m at the time, making it one of the biggest heists in crypto history.

While the exact cause of the breach is still unknown, the team recently said that they are certain that it was an external breach. “All evidence points to this attack being socially engineered, rather than a technical flaw,” they said.

At 9:04 UTC on Thursday morning, AXS is trading at USD 65.4. It’s down less than 1% in a day and up 13% in a week. 

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