What is Immutable?
- Author
- CRYPTO PORT Editorial
- Published
- Updated
- Reading time
- 5 min
In short
Immutable provides the infrastructure a blockchain game needs to launch and operate. It runs as a rollup on Ethereum and is structured to keep the cost of minting and trading in-game NFTs low. The company behind it, Immutable of Australia, started by building its own card game, Gods Unchained.
Key points
- Bundles NFT minting, trading, wallets and anti-fraud tooling for game studios
- Operates as a rollup that posts data to Ethereum
- Offers two environments: Immutable X using zero-knowledge proofs, and the EVM-compatible Immutable zkEVM
- Grew out of requirements found running its own title, Gods Unchained
Definition
An Ethereum rollup platform and surrounding services for blockchain games, handling NFT issuance and trading at reduced cost.
Immutable is aimed at the cost and usability of NFTs in games. If minting a single item on Ethereum itself costs several dollars, free drops and large item counts stop working. And asking players to operate a wallet drives them away.
Technically, it batches transactions and posts proofs of their correctness to Ethereum. The original Immutable X used StarkWare's technology to handle large volumes of NFT mints and trades with zero-knowledge proofs. Immutable zkEVM, developed with Polygon, was added later so that existing Solidity code can be reused.
It supplies more than an execution environment: game-oriented wallets, a passport-style login, marketplace connectivity and transaction monitoring, all intended to reduce what a studio has to build itself. The IMX token is used for network fees, staking and governance.
In practice, Gods Unchained runs on it alongside titles from several outside studios. The core pitch is that players can trade in-game items with each other, though whether a game finds an audience still depends on the game.
Watch out for
- · The value of an in-game item depends on the title continuing and holding players; if a game shuts down, the NFT may survive with nothing to use it for
- · Moving assets from the rollup back to Ethereum requires a withdrawal process that is not always immediate
- · Phishing that imitates game downloads or marketplaces has been reported
Frequently asked questions
If items are NFTs, do they survive the game shutting down?
The token record stays on-chain, but what displays and uses the item is the game's own servers and art. If the game stops, the record remains while the use for it largely does not.