The story of ImmutableX begins at the creation of Etherbots.
The brainchild of two brothers, James and Robbie Ferguson, Etherbots is a decentralized Robot Wars game built on the Ethereum blockchain. More importantly, it’s widely believed to be the world’s first blockchain-based game.
With learnings from Etherbots under their belt, the Ferguson brothers then turned to the creation of Gods Unchained, the world’s first blockchain-based trading card game.
In their initial development of Gods Unchained, the team aimed to fix many of the problems of traditional gaming by rewarding players with full digital ownership of their in-game assets. Finally, players could truly own and extract value from their games.
A first of its kind, the game exploded in popularity. But as the game grew, more issues arose around Ethereum’s scalability constraints. The team sought help from blockchain security and scalability provider, Starkware, and the problems were alleviated. Scalability increased, operating costs decreased, and security remained uncompromised.
It was clear there was a broader need in the market, not only for blockchain games but for the underlying infrastructure needed to bring them to life.
Enter ImmutableX.
What is ImmutableX?
ImmutableX is a layer-2 scaling solution, providing an NFT infrastructure on the Ethereum blockchain. With the mission of powering the next generation of Web3 games, ImmutableX aims to improve both the experience of users and developers by offering seamless gameplay, lightning-fast transaction speeds, and gas-free, fully carbon-neutral NFT minting.
Historically, the Ethereum network has experienced scalability issues like low transaction throughput, long transaction times, and expensive gas fees.
Using the power of StarkEx zero-knowledge rollups (ZK rollups), ImmutableX can offer transaction speeds of up to 9,000 TPS, all while still leveraging the security of the Ethereum blockchain.
With the much-anticipated Merge shifting Ethereum's consensus model from a Proof-of-Work (PoW) mechanism to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS), ImmutableX's platform has become even more environmentally friendly. Reduced energy consumption results in the purchase of fewer carbon credits, freeing up more resources for ImmutableX to invest back into ecological sustainability. Furthermore, ImmutableX will continue to scale alongside Ethereum. Many of the promised scalability features around sharding and throughput increases are expected to arrive by the end of 2023. As Ethereum's efficiency improves through sharding, so will Immutable's.
With its software development kits (SDKs) and REST APIs, ImmutableX takes the load off developers who once needed to build this infrastructure in-house. Finally, studios and game developers can spend less time on the nitty-gritty backend and more time creating incredible gameplay.
A perfect example of this is ImmutableX Link.
Whereas developers are often required to build wallet integration products directly into their games, ImmutableX makes it easy with ImmutableX's Link SDK. Link offers users and developers a seamless third-party NFT wallet integration experience, all while maintaining the battle-tested security of the Ethereum blockchain.
ImmutableX currently supports MetaMask, GameStop Wallet, and Magic Link, which allows users to create a wallet using only an email address. No private keys or complicated crypto jargon is required.
In many cases, Immutable's partners have leveraged this technology to turn around projects in weeks and months instead of years at a fraction of the cost.
Also, with the creation of the ImmutableX shared global order book, ImmutableX can quickly integrate with NFT marketplaces across the broader Web3 ecosystem, further enhancing liquidity and increasing trade volume.
The Growth of ImmutableX
Since its inception, ImmutableX has taken the blockchain industry by storm. And as Web3 gaming has gained popularity over the past twelve months, its momentum has only snowballed.
ImmutableX is now the proud partner of the blockchain gaming industry's top games, including Illuvium, Guild of Guardians, and PlanetQuest. It's also integrated with leading marketplaces like Rarible, Nifty Gateway, and TokenTrove.
To pour fuel on the fire, ImmutableX raised a $60 million Series B funding round at a valuation of $410 million in September 2021. This was followed shortly after by a $200 million Series C at a $2.5 billion valuation. With a war chest of fresh capital, the team plans to continue its domination of the Web3 gaming industry, to increase its total headcount to over 600 employees by 2025.
This funding, along with Immutable's cutting-edge technology and a strong roster of top Web3 games, has proven critical in attracting top gaming partners from around the globe. In Q3 2022 alone, ImmutableX onboarded over 50 games and has an additional 1,000 games being built in a test environment. Top titles like Ember Sword switched over from layer-2 blockchain Polygon, while other games like Deviants' Factions and StarHeroes migrated over from the now-defunct Terra ecosystem.
In February, GameStop partnered with ImmutableX to launch the GameStop NFT Marketplace and a dedicated $100 million grant fund for game developers to build games on the platform. This partnership will bring faster, more affordable, and carbon-neutral NFT transactions to millions of GameStop users worldwide while also adding significant liquidity and volume to the ecosystem of existing and future ImmutableX games.
$IMX Token and Marketplace
But perhaps the most exciting of all advancements has been the introduction of the IMX Coin, Immutable’s native utility token $IMX. Launched in November 2021, $IMX is used widely across the entire ImmutableX protocol for three main functions: fees, staking, and governance.
Built and distributed with a community-first mindset, over 50% of the supply is actively deployed into the project's ecosystem for daily user rewards, developer grants, liquidity, and marketing purposes.
These user rewards are distributed through the IMX Trading Rewards program, where all users are eligible to earn $IMX tokens simply by trading NFTs on the ImmutableX platform. Users can also earn an additional $IMX through the Staking Rewards program. We are nothing without our community, and we are so excited to offer our users and supporters a way to stay mutually incentivized in our long-term success.
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