Immutable: a new approach to NFTs and crypto gaming

Immutable is the scalability Layer 2 solution built on Ethereum and aimed to improve the NFT situation on this blockchain. It's currently heavily aligned with the gaming industry, aimed in particular at the crypto game developers and consumers. That's a curious combination, but it's not all that you can do with this solution.

The crux of the matter is that Immutable attempts to iron out the many shortcomings of NFTs. In their essence, they seem a promising and curious concept with a lot of applications in gaming, business, and beyond. It's true, however, that the way they were implemented was largely for quick money schemes.

NFT situation

Non-fungible tokens are a relatively recent trend, although it's already been tried, tested, and experimented with on countless occasions and by countless projects.

NFTs are, in essence, unique tokens with digital signatures that bear extensive information related to their holder. In practice, it means that an NFT can be ensured as a personal possession, and there would be proof that a given asset is unique. It was, infamously, used in one of the less societally beneficial ways.

Many NFTs were one way or another minted on Ethereum. The smart contract functionality allows for complex processes that enable the creation of these digital assets. The problem with that, however, is that Ethereum requires a lot of gas by modern standards. There are now countless networks that charge much less for their operations.

Immutable, created in 2021, aimed to solve both the issues of NFT representation and high gas fees without leaving the comfortable sphere of Ethereum.

Immutable defined

Immutable is an L2 solution. It means that it's not a fully independent project with its own network, like Bitcoin or Ethereum. Instead, it's a subservient chain built atop an existing blockchain. In this case, the home chain is Ethereum. As such, many key functions and components of Ethereum are also a part of the Immutable.

At the same time, Immutable retains many of its unique additions and features. It doesn't wholly follow the Ethereum model, which enables it to improve upon the largely rigid structure of the big blockchain. In particular, this translates into a more scalable, speedy, and flexible experience for developers and users alike.

Originally not solely a gaming project, Immutable grew to see the gaming industry as the most potential and promising place for NFTs. There, its scalability features can be used to a great extent, while the non-fungible tokens have been proven to work well inside and in service to games if implemented correctly.

Scalability

Scalability means building scale for your project. Scale refers to the ability of your project or business to perform under increasing workload. You basically need extra resources and power that you can allocate if need be. In practical terms, it means both obtaining more processing power and increasing your current capabilities.

In this case, more scalability is achieved by decreasing the operational costs. Each transaction (be it financial transfer, minting, or other data exchange) needs some ETH, called gas. The price of an individual transaction is small, but put together they can run up quite a tab.

Immutable handles ETH's scalability issues by implementing a zk-rollup function within its Layer 2 infrastructure.

Zk-rollups

Zk-rollups, or zero-knowledge rollups, are a method of processing transactions in bulk off-chain, which is meant to decrease processing costs. Let's break down the concept into its two constituent parts:

• Rollups refer to the way such solutions help process transactions. Instead of being processed individually on Ethereum, they are bundled together and processed off-chain (under Immutable's oversight) as one big package. Then, they are returned back to the main blockchain and redistributed as needed.
• Zero-knowledge refers to the way transactions are validated off-chain in order to not revalidate each individual transaction again. To prove the correctness of these transactions, some information about them is shared without actually being disclosed. In this way, the transactions are approved without breaching privacy.

It's a very efficient way of increasing scalability for your business. Without it, such aspects of the development process as speed, cost-effectiveness, and flexibility are constantly in question. Zk-rollups help alleviate such concerns in relation to NFTs, but these problems are still not wholly solved.

NFTs on Immutable

NFTs form the core of this solution's experience. Much of its functionality is aimed at providing developers with a better, cheaper, scalable, and faster way of implementing NFTs. This seems like a minor benefit, seeing how secondary these tokens have become in recent years.

However, gaming, crypto-aligned gaming in particular, still uses NFTs on many occasions, such as for:

• Rewards
• In-game items
• Cross-chain compatibility
• Ownership proof
• Art.

There are many such applications in games, as it is a very flexible space full of various methods of self-expression. NFTs find a lot of acclaim in the gaming world even now, despite their poor reputation.

IMX token

Immutable has an inner utility token, also called Immutable (IMX). It's not used, like many major tokens, in a typical consensus mechanism, for staking or mining. Instead, it mostly exists so that participants of this project are able to propose and vote on the new directions and features for this solution.

It can also be used for staking and trading NFTs, which eventually means receiving rewards for being active on Immutable. Additionally, fees related to processes inherent to Immutable can be paid with IMX. There are several more minor activities open for this coin.

At the end of the day, it's also listed on many exchanges, where it can be bought and sold. It's not currently living its best times, but it's stable enough to be considered a viable, if not the best investment. It is, ultimately, better suited for inner activities within the Immutable system.

Conclusion

Immutable is admittedly a niche, specific Layer 2 solution that improves the scalability potential for NFTs. It's still a very efficient and comfortable product, which is already in use by hundreds of gaming studios all over the world. There are no massive games built with Immutable just yet, but it is the most advanced solution of this sort on the market at the moment.