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Immutable has raised $ 60 million for its platform that uses non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to help monetize games.
Sydney, australia Immutable He created a platform on top of Ethereum to monetize NFT in games, and is also the creator of the trading card game Gods Unchained NFT. NFTs use the transparent and secure blockchain ledger to uniquely identify digital items. That means rare digital items can be sold for higher prices in NFT-based games.
The company also recently revealed that it will issue a $ GODS token. You will hand them out or sell them to players so they can have a say in how the studio runs the game. At launch, $ GODS will function as a governance and utility token, giving headlines a voice in the digital space, as well as active engagement opportunities that allow players to earn rewards through gaming campaigns.
Over time, the $ GODS functionality will expand to embed the token within Gods Unchained’s “play to win” game loops, allowing players to earn $ GODS tokens as rewards when people play. If those tokens increase in value, players can sell them for their own benefit. I call this the Leisure Economy, where we all get paid to play. Immutable hopes that the larger gaming companies will adopt NFT, which has been popular with crypto enthusiasts, but is somewhat confusing for ordinary gamers.
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“It’s exciting,” said Robbie Ferguson, co-founder of Immutable, in an interview with GamesBeat. “The most important thing we are looking to build is a set of tools that core developers can use to create NFT games without having to worry about blockchain.”
Tools include ways to enable credit card purchases, anti-money laundering services, know-your-customer compliance, and more when it comes to implementing NFT in games.
“We can meet the end-to-end needs of the core customer,” he said.
The NFT hype
Above: Gods Unchained is a collectible card game.
The NFT market rose to new highs in the second quarter of 2021, with $ 2.5 billion in sales in the first half of the year, up from just $ 13.7 million in the first half of 2020. NFTs have exploded in other applications such as art, sports collectibles, and music. Best shot in the NBA (a digital version of the collectible basketball cards) is an example.
Posted by Dapper Labs, NBA Top Shot has surpassed $ 750 million in sales in just one year. AND to NFT digital collage by artist Beeple sold at Christie’s for $ 69.3 million. Investors are pouring money into NFT, and some of those investors are gaming fans. Weekly NFT revenues peaked in May and then fell, but in August those Income was higher than ever.
Noting the increase in NFT’s sales, Ferguson said, “Look, I think we’re in a cycle of hype. At the moment, I think people are buying these entities with the expectation of making a profit. It will crash, it will crash big time. It is a speculative boom. Every boom is good because it brings a lot of adoption. You can’t really have perfect speculation. You always worry about it going up or down. What excites me is the transition to Utility-based NFTs. “
He believes his company has been able to successfully raise money because it focuses on infrastructure, not trendy digital items that could easily go out of style. He’s also creating games that people enjoy playing, like Gods Unchained. Creating games like that helps the company understand the needs and requirements of the infrastructure, he said.
“We’ve already been through two bear markets as a company, so we’re ready for anything,” Ferguson said.
Immutable X Protocol
Above: the $ GODS Unchained token.
Immutable has also created Immutable x, a Layer 2 scalability protocol for NFT on Ethereum. That means that it allows transactions at a much faster rate than was intended on Ethereum, and it doesn’t use as much computing power and therefore doesn’t have as many environmental effects as transactions on Ethereum normally have. On top of that, you don’t incur high “gas fees” or computer fees for users.
Immutable X can handle 9,000 transactions per second, much more than Ethereum, which is the most popular blockchain. That puts immutable on a scale to support games with millions of players. As Ethereum network traffic has increased significantly, transactions are slower and more expensive to execute, and security is increasingly important. Over time, Ferguson said it should grow.
Immutable X was created with these pain points in mind. The escalation protocol was built with StarkWare’s ZK cumulative package, capable of massive scalability without compromising security. Last month, $ 600 million was hacked into less secure scaling solutions that rely on centralized “bridges” for their connection to Ethereum, rather than zero knowledge teststhe company said.
Immutable X has a marketplace for players of games like Gods Unchained to buy and sell the items they have collected. Games like Immutable’s upcoming Guild of Guardians will mint their NFTs on the carbon-neutral Immutable X platform.
The foundership
Above: Gods Unchained pays to play.
All of these things – the games, the players, the protocol, and the marketplace – have made the company valuable. Bitkraft Ventures and King River Capital led the round, with participation from Prosus Ventures, Galaxy Interactive, Fabric Ventures, Alameda Research, AirTree Ventures, Reinventure, Apex Capital and VaynerFund.
The funding will be used to expand the global engineering and sales team and strengthen key partnerships with gaming companies. It will also be used to scale the growth of NFT games published internally by Immutable, Gods Unchained, and the Guild of Guardians.
Jens Hilgers, a founding partner at Bitkraft Ventures, said in a statement that the momentum behind Ethereum is encouraging and Immutable may fuel a new wave of blockchain game developers.
Ferguson said his company has 120 employees and expects to grow to 200 in six months.
As for competition, Ferguson noted that there are other major blockchains with an eye on NFTs, including Flow (owned by Dapper Labs), Polygon, Solana, and others that are “getting out of the box.” He said this is a good thing because “the most important mission we are doing is that we want to make digital worlds a reality. And that means giving people ownership of their stuff on a secure decentralized blockchain. And as long as the winning solution is something really secure and decentralized, I’m happy. “
He noted that Immutable is in a good position because it has been working on its technology for more than two years.
Gaming partners
Above: Guild of the Guardians has partnered with esports organization NRG.
From collectible NFT cards to trendy NFTs, Immutable’s technology partnerships span multiple industries.
Immutable’s own Gods Unchained is led by Chris Clay, the former Magic the Gathering Arena game director, and Immutable is also forming the Guild of the Guardians.
Other notable projects include upcoming support on OpenSea (NFT market), Mintable (NFT market), RTFKT studios (NFT fashion artists), Ecomi / VeVe Collectibles (licensed collectibles), Medal.TV (more game clips website). world’s largest), HighRise (social sandbox), TokenTrove (collectibles market), SuperFarm (defi NFT farm), Epics.GG (white label market platform for NFT), Illuvium (auto battler RPG), Lucid Sight (MLB Champions Baseball, Crypto Space Commander), War Riders (post -apocalyptic MMO), Mintable (NFT market), Double Jump.Tokyo/MCH+ and many more.
10 or more major partnerships with game companies have already been announced, and that should expand in the coming months, he said.
“The most exciting thing by far is the interest from the big gaming companies,” Ferguson said. “They say they have an NFT strategy that has accelerated in three or four years. We see that all the major game studios around the world have teams dedicated to figuring out what their NFT strategy is, and some are building defensive strategies. We are aggressively going in and saying that we can be the market leader in NFT experiences for gamers. “
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