What Is It

Immutable X, the first layer 2 scaling solution for NFTs on Ethereum. It utilizes StarkWare’s Validium and ZK-rollup technology to enable transaction speeds of over 9,000 per second with zero gas fees while retaining Ethereum’s security.

Immutable is the developer of the Immutable X protocol, and the developer and publisher of popular NFT project Gods Unchained and Guild of Guardians. Immutable is an industry-leading NFT technology company with over 100 members with backgrounds ranging from blockchain, FAANG, finance, fintech, and management consulting.

Through an amazing partnership with StarkWare, Immutable X, combines StarkWare’s world-class layer-2 scaling knowledge with Immutable’s deep understanding of the NFT space.

Immutable X is the first scaling solution for NFTs, which doesn’t compromise the security or decentralization of Ethereum. Its cutting-edge protocol for NFTs enables projects to build on Layer 2 Ethereum with a fantastic developer and user experience. Any NFT Projects currently built on Ethereum or plan to build on Ethereum can take advantage of Immutable X’s protocol, allowing them to trade or create NFT’s with zero gas cost and transaction speeds up to 9000 TPS! It seeks to solve the key challenges facing the Ethereum NFT ecosystem, such as scaling, UX, fees, and environmental impact. Immutable X has instant trade confirmation, massive scalability (9,000 TPS+), and zero gas fees – without compromising user custody.

➤ Low Scalability – Ethereum, as of now, can process roughly 5 to 15 TPS. Increased users equal increased network congestion within turn leads to reduced TPS and high transaction speeds.

➤ Poor User Experience – On top of slow transaction speeds and high gas costs, NFT users would be able to make better choices when buying NFT’s if they had additional information available to them.

➤ Slow Developer Experience – Current setup with Ethereum consumes a lot of time as it requires configuring the blockchain components of their project.

➤ Illiquidity – As NFT’s are less liquid than compared to fungible assets, NFT traders are unable to sell their assets quickly nor source the best price possible.

Value Proposition

➤ Through the use of their technology, Immutable X allows start-ups or individuals to build successful projects, applications on Ethereum without suffering from slow transaction speeds and high gas.
➤ Developers can integrate their marketplace with Immutable X within ten days, but working on cutting this down to two days.
➤ Immutable X lets projects stay on Ethereum while massively boosting their scalability and liquidity.
➤ Zero gas fees for peer-to-peer trading.
➤ Marketplaces can set their own trading fees.
➤ No custodial risk; users keep their private keys.
➤ Massive scalability up to 9,000+ TPS.
➤ Not a centralized sidechain.
➤ Supports ERC-20 and ERC-721.
➤ A true L2 inheriting the security of L1 (Ethereum).

Design and Security

➤ ZK-Rollup Scaling Engine – This is an optimized scaling solution that works by essentially batching a large number of transactions together, generating a “validity proof” of those transactions, and then sending that “proof” to layer 1 (Ethereum chain) for processing. The technology is a combination of both NFT-specific exchange, proof logic, and rollup technology developed by StartWare. This cutting-edge NFT trading tool allows for more than 9,000 NFT transfers, trades, and mints per second!

➤ API Abstraction Layer – For increased efficiency, Immutable X wraps the scaling engine in a robust set of REST API’s. This eliminates the need to interact with smart contracts as every transaction can be simply done by making an API call. This dramatically speeds up the construction of new applications on Immutable X.

➤ Compliance & Support for World-Class Partners – Immutable X will offer a platform that is fully legally compliant and is capable of being the trusted partner of these larger projects to retain them on Ethereum.

➤ STARK Proof’s – Even at increased costs, Immutable X uses STARK (scalable, transparent argument of knowledge) Proofs instead of traditional SNARK Proofs. They simply do this because STARK Proof’s have promoted greater user security.

➤ Data Availability – As users are Immutable X’s primary concern, they have designed two ways (Rollup & Calidium) that allow their users to withdraw their assets if the protocol becomes unresponsive. In both cases, the system is decentralized: even if Immutable disappears, is hacked, or is actively malicious, the protocol will be able to recover, and user assets are safe.

Features

➤ Platform SDKs – Platform and programming language-specific software development kits (SDKs) allow partners to integrate with Immutable X more easily. They are aiming for a two-day integration period which is astonishing.
➤ Default Marketplace & Transaction History Explorer – The purpose of the Immutable X Marketplace:
Default home for trading NFTs on the protocol.
Lowers the barrier of entry for content creators and smaller developers.
Offers full transaction history.

➤ Shared Liquidity & Orderbook – This is really cool. Immutable X provides a shared global order book to facilitate protocol liquidity. Imagine being able to create an order on one marketplace and being filled on another. The significant advantage of this is increased liquidity, price discovery and effective marketplace bootstrapping all in one ecosystem.
➤ NFT-Enabled Wallets – Unlike other blockchains or sidechains, Immutable X currently supports all desktop Ethereum wallets without forcing users to switch networks. This promotes a thriving third-party marketplace ecosystem.
➤Asset Mining – All assets are minted on Immutable X Layer 2 protocol still retain the security of Ethereum’s Layer. Assets can either be minted with either mutable or immutable metadata. Mutable metadata simply draws information for a minting applications server, providing a ‘metadata schema” which details each asset mutable metadata properties. On the other hand, when an asset is minted with Immutable metadata, called a “minting blob” or “blueprint”, it will be passed to the L1 smart contract on asset withdrawal. This technology has already been used to mint more than 10 million NFTs on Immutable X (more than all ERC721 NFTs on L1). This combination of immutable metadata and mutable metadata support allows NFTs to be used to represent every type of digital asset – from a game asset with a changing experience level to a generative artwork NFT based on an immutable seed and mutable user inputs.

Monetization

Fees – As standard, Immutable X will make their revenue through fees. A 2% fee with be collated on all NFT trades and primary assets sales. Any Marketplace built on Immutable X can assign its own fees to every order, and these orders will be accessible on every marketplace in the Immutable X ecosystem. In addition, to trading fees, there will be asset originator royalty fees collected each time an asset is traded.

Token Utility / Incentives

➤ Fees – When you pay fees on Immutable X, e.g., in ETH, 20% of this is automatically converted into IMX token and pushed into a “staking rewards pool”.
➤ Staking – IMX tokens received as part of the 20% fee capture mechanism outlined above will be rewarded to people who have staked their IMX. This is very clever because compared to traditional staking methods, the supply is either inflationary, or there is a fixed amount of the total supply allocated to staking rewards which over time depletes to zero. Immutable X has designed a way for staking rewards to be infinite without jeopardizing token accrual.
➤ Daily Rewards – Immutable X has a system in place which promotes incentivized organic growth of the ecosystem. Users will have the opportunity to earn points by conducting pro-network activities, such as trading, depositing, or minting assets. Through the staking rewards pool, these points will be used to get some ICX. The amount of ICX will depend on your proportional share of the total points earned by all users.

➤ Decentralized Governance – Token holders will be able to vote on token-related proposals via decentralized governance. Proposals will include topics such as allocating token reserve procedures, voting on developer grants, activating daily rewards, and changes in token supply. Two-thirds of these rewards will be subjected to a six-month linear release.

Tokenomics

20m Total Supply will be provisionally allocated as per the below chart.

Token Unlock and Vesting

Very admirable three and half year vesting schedule with a gradual release of tokens from launch. Please see the below chart for more detail.

Immutable X – Carbon Neutral

Immutable X plays its part in the environment by reducing the gas used per NFT trade or mint. This is achieved by their unique technology, which batches transactions, compresses them into a validity proof, and uploads them to Ethereum. Less gas = less energy used = less carbon.
In addition, Immutable will buy carbon credits needed to offset the energy footprint of any NFT created or traded on Immutable X to zero. That means:‍
Any NFT that is created or traded on Immutable X is 100% carbon neutral.
Any NFT marketplace that is built on Immutable X is 100% carbon neutral.

Any NFT game that is built on Immutable X is 100% carbon neutral.

Team

Team size – 92 employees.
Software Developers – 28.
Business Development – 13.
Misc- 51

James Ferguson (CEO and Cofounder) – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesanthonyferguson/
Robbie Ferguson (Cofounder ) – https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbieferguson/
Alex Connolly (Game Director) –  https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-connolly/

Partnerships

➤ Huobi Global
➤ Opensea – World’s Largest NFT Marketplace
➤ VeVe – the worlds leading mobile-first digital collective platform
➤ SuperfarmDAO (defi NFT farm)
➤ Epics.GG (collectibles)
➤ Illuvium (auto battler RPG)
➤ Lucid Sight (MLB Champions Baseball)
➤ Crypto Space Commander), War Riders (post-apocalyptic MMO)
➤ Gods Unchained (TCG)
➤ Guild of Guardians (mobile RPG)
➤ Mintable (NFT marketplace)

Investors

Immutable X has a lot of high-end investors which really add to the credibility of this project. Please see image below for an up to date list of investors

Public ICO Sale

ICO sale planned for Sept 8th 2021. Two options are available – please see https://blog.coinlist.co/announcing-the-immutable-x-token-sale-on-coinlist/

Conclusion

Think of Immutable X as an extremely well-designed efficient protocol that power applications in marketplaces. They are the under-the-hood tech of a particular application that enables the magic to happen rather than front-end usability. Immutable X provides a viable use case that will allow the NFT space to grow without restrictions such as slow transactions and high gas. This will be a real game-changer and will do exceptionally well.