Well, the cat’s out of the bag. As you can see from the title and our joint press release with Immutable, we’re moving to Immutable X, an important and exciting step for the future of Ember Sword, which will allow us to continue to scale smoothly as we reach the next stage of our journey. That means this post is a bit more technical than usual, owing to the nature of the topic, but we’ve made it as accessible as we can. Strap in.

Our journey thus far

Over the past three years we’ve watched Ember Sword grow from just a concept to one of the most hotly anticipated releases in the blockchain gaming space. It has taken a lot of hard work and dedication to get to this point. Dedication both from us and you — our lovely and awesome community who continue to surpass our expectations at every turn thus far.

The most recent, record-breaking success achieved by you guys were our land sales, which we conducted on Polygon. Polygon (MATIC) has, thus far, served us valiantly, however the ride hasn’t always been a perfectly smooth one, and given what we know is yet to come, we felt the need to take some radical decisions to ensure we can continue to build out Ember Sword to its maximum potential.

Introducing Immutable X

We’ve chosen to move from Polygon to Immutable X for a variety of reasons, chief among them being a need for scalability and a desire to tie into the Ethereum ecosystem more tightly. After a lot of research, Immutable X was identified as the solution best suited to our needs.

Immutable X is the leading Layer 2 scaling solution for NFTs which enables gas-free minting and trading, while not compromising the security of the most used blockchain globally for NFTs — Ethereum. Powered by StarkWare’s innovative technology, it offers instant trade confirmation, massive scalability, and a streamlined user experience.

Let’s take a look at what this means for our community.

Why we are partnering with Immutable X

By making the switch over to Immutable we’ll be able to offer a broad range of new features and capabilities, some immediately and others in the near future, that we believe will be instrumental in the continued success of Ember Sword.

So, let’s have a look at exactly what kind of capabilities we’re talking about. There are quite a lot, but we’ll take a look at the most major and significant additions.

• Massive speed and responsiveness
  Once we’ve migrated to Immutable X, we will immediately be able to benefit from not only its massive transaction capacity, but also its extremely rapid transactions, allowing minting and trading with confirmation times in the 100’s of milliseconds, eliminating annoying waiting time.
• Increased accessibility
  In the near future, we expect to be able to offer a custodial wallet solution on top of Immutable X for those that don’t have a crypto wallet installed in their browser yet, making it easier than ever to own Collectibles in Ember Sword.
• Pay with credit card
  In future, we want to make the purchasing process more streamlined, especially for smaller transactions, making it possible to buy Land and Collectibles using regular fiat currency (i.e. your credit card). This would also put an end to the massive gas fees associated with buying and swapping crypto on mainnet, which often exceed the cost of buying, for example, a single, regular land. Switching to Immutable X is the first step in our plan to solve this challenge for good!
• No need to hold tokens to pay for gas
  Since Immutable X is a gasless protocol, there will be no more need to stock up on MATIC before every event, sale or transaction, making life that much easier, especially for the not so experienced blockchain users.
• Improved security
  The layer-2 solution by Immutable is powered by StarkWare, who are trailblazers in this space. Without getting too technical, we will essentially be tied directly to Ethereum, with all the proof of transactions being posted to Ethereum on a continuous basis. This essentially translates to having all of the security of Ethereum, while retaining the massive speed and responsiveness we need to deliver a satisfactory game experience.

Now, let’s see what kind of effect this will have on things which are already put in motion.

Effects on timeline & existing NFTs

Timeline

Fear not, this change will not bring too many significant alterations to our timeline or existing NFTs. Here is the breakdown.

Due to the work necessary to properly implement Immutable X and make sure everything is working fine, we will need to slightly push back our Pre-Alpha test in 2022. We will be posting further updates soon.

Existing NFTs

If you have purchased any land or badges, this change does not affect the ownership or value of your NFTs. The only difference is that, at a later point, you will have to migrate your NFTs from Polygon to Immutable X to actually be able to use them in-game. Don’t fret, the process of doing so is straightforward and easy as can be. Expect more news & instruction and how to do so in a blogpost down the line, which will explain the process in detail.

And that about covers everything. We hope you’re just as excited about the Immutable X partnership as we are. This announcement spells nothing but bigger and better things for Ember Sword and the community. We feel that we are now closer than ever to leaving a permanent mark on the MMO space in changing the status quo for the better and in-line with our core beliefs and values.

Thank you for being a part of this journey! We’ll see you in the next one.

Immutable X Partnership (updated) was originally published in EmberSword on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.