Sky Mavis is a Vietnamese blockchain gaming company founded in 2018 by Trung Nguyen (CEO) and Aleksander Leonard Larsen (COO), headquartered in Ho Chi Minh City. Sky Mavis created Axie Infinity — the NFT-based play-to-earn game where players collect, breed, and battle creatures called Axies — and the Ronin Network, an Ethereum sidechain designed to handle the high transaction volume of Axie gameplay without Ethereum gas fees. Axie Infinity became a global phenomenon in 2021, particularly in the Philippines, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian countries where players earned more from the game than from local wages. In March 2022, the Ronin Network was hacked for approximately $625 million in one of the largest DeFi exploits in history.
Background
Trung Nguyen, a University of Melbourne computer science graduate, founded Sky Mavis after seeing the potential of NFT gaming. Axie Infinity launched on Ethereum in 2018 but was hampered by gas costs; the team built Ronin (a proof-of-authority sidechain) in 2021 to enable gasless in-game transactions. Axie’s play-to-earn model — paying SLP tokens for winning battles — went viral in COVID-era Southeast Asia where income opportunities were limited.
Axie Infinity Economy
| Token | Role |
|---|---|
| AXS (Axie Infinity Shards) | Governance token; staking; fee payments |
| SLP (Smooth Love Potion) | In-game reward token; earned from battles; used for breeding |
| RON (Ronin) | Native gas token for the Ronin Network |
The Ronin Hack (March 2022)
On March 23, 2022, an attacker compromised 5 of 9 Ronin validator nodes — including 4 controlled by Sky Mavis and 1 through a social engineering attack on the Axie DAO — and stole:
- 173,600 ETH (~$592M at the time)
- 25.5 million USDC
Total: ~$625 million — the largest DeFi/bridge hack in history (at the time). The U.S. Treasury Department attributed the hack to the Lazarus Group (North Korean state-sponsored hackers) in a subsequent Tornado Cash sanction.
Sky Mavis compensated users from its treasury and a fundraising round led by Binance.
Decline of the Play-to-Earn Model
Following the Ronin hack and the 2022 bear market, SLP token prices collapsed by 99%+. Scholars (players who borrowed Axie NFTs in exchange for sharing earnings) found the game economically unviable. The experience became a cautionary tale for unsustainable token-incentivized game economies.
Related Terms
Sources
- Sky Mavis Website — company and game overview.
- Ronin Bridge Hack Post-Mortem — incident documentation.