In a recent tweet, the popular NFT scaling platform Immutable X announced it has raised $200 million dollars in Series C funding to support its international expansion. With this latest round of funding the NFT platform has reached a valuation of $2.5 billion dollars.
Immutable X Expanding Globally
The Series C funding round was headed by Temasek, a Singapore based investment company and joined by 5 new investment companies including ParaFi Capital, Liberty Global Princeville Capital, Arrington Capital and Mirae Asset. In addition existing investors in Immutable X added to their positions the company during this round.
As reported in a recent press release, the raised capital will be utilized to power Immutable’s global expansion plan, accelerate the company’s growth by investing in the Layer 2 NFT scaling platform and to scale the Immutable gaming studio which creates games on the blockchain. Funding will likely go towards scaling its current flagship games “Gods Unchained” and “Guild of Guardians” as well. Immutable co-founder and president Robbie Ferguson tweeted “Were supercharging our mission to make NFTs mainstream through the high-quality blockchain games (and more). NFTs are eating the world. Gaming will be the trojan horse”
What is Immutable X and What Makes it Different?
Immutable X is a layer 2 protocol built on the ethereum (ETH) blockchain used for trading NFTs that provides zero gas fees and does not compromise user ownership. The Immutable X layer 2 scaling solution incorporates the security and power of the Ethereum network instead of trying to compete with it. Using Immutable X has been made very easy as you can use popular existing wallets like Metamask and others.
Immutable X Liquidity:
The platform is able to maximize liquidity of NFTs as well by incorporating ‘virtual fungible markets’, which are based on any characteristic of the NFT or token. For example if you own a rare red and gold gorilla NFT you could search and find it based on any single word or term, like red, gold or gorilla. At the same time you can list your NFT for sale in all markets based on single traits or characteristics.
Immutable X and Scaling:
Scaling for blockchains is one of the tougher technical issues to conquer. Ethereum has had it’s challenges scaling due to its popularity and the explosion of NFTs which has caused intermittent high gas fees on transactions. Ethereum has been hard at work addressing their scalling issues and plan to release Ethereum 2.0 in phases to resolve them. In the meantime several other standalone blockchains have looked to capitalize on the NFT hysteria offering higher transaction speeds and thus better scalability.
However scalability can be a double-edged sword as many times adding the scalability can cause a move away from tighter security across the blockchain depending upon the methods implemented. To ensure high scalability and security, Immutable X teamed up with StarkWare to allow tremendous batching of trades off-chain, where users sign the transaction, then it goes back on-chain. This process allows for a single proof that compresses those trades into a single transaction at a fixed fee or gas price. Immutable X actually pays those gas fees for its users and developers, which presents a stark contrast from the high gas fees of trading NFTs on some other platforms.