Scroll to read more

Axie Infinity is set to enter a crucial phase in its development after months of delay.

<Body>

The Axie Infinity team announced on Thursday that it is preparing to enter Phase 2 in a matter of hours.

The team revealed that it would deploy a large patch for its Origin game over the next few hours. The patch will officially put the project in Phase 2, signifying the launch of its Ronin sidechain. However, Axie Infinity said that the game will be down until the maintenance is complete.

Phase 2 signifies the launch of Axie Infinity’s Ronin Chain. The Ronin sidechain was originally scheduled to go live in April but faced certain difficulties.

The Ronin Bridge suffered a $625 million exploit in March 2022. At the time, the attackers stole 173,600 ether (ETH) and 25.5 million in USDC from the sidechain.

However, Sky Mavis, the development team behind Axie Infinity and the Ronin Bridge, took certain measures such as reducing token emissions, to prevent the collapse of the Axie Infinity ecosystem.

The Axie Infinity team reopened the bridge earlier this week. At the time, Axie Infinity said the bridge was restarted after an internal audit and external audits by blockchain security firms Verichains and Certik.

Axie Infinity assured its community that ll user funds are fully backed on a 1:1 basis by the new bridge.

The new Ronin Bridge design includes a circuit-breaker system, which serves as a contingency plan to boost the security of the bridge. The circuit-breaker system is designed to halt large suspicious withdrawals, developers said.

Bridges have become quite popular within the cryptocurrency ecosystem. They are protocols that allow the exchange of data, cryptocurrency or assets like NFTs from one blockchain to another.

With the Ronin Bridge, Axie Infinity users can transfer funds and other assets between the Ethereum and the Ronin blockchains.

AXS, the native token of the Axie Infinity has been underperforming since the start of the week. AXS is down by more than 13% in the last 24 hours and currently trades at $13.20 per coin.