THE BEST EASY GOES RESIDE IN THE UPLAND METAVERSE
October 4, 2021Source : Ayo News
Immutable, the Layer-2 scalability protocol for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Ethereum, has raised US$60M in a Series B funding round, bringing its total funding to US$77.5M.
Similar to how leading payment platforms enable online commerce, Immutable has created the underlying technical infrastructure to power NFT trading for any business.
The Series B round was co-led by BITKRAFT Ventures and King River Capital, with participation from Prosus Ventures, Galaxy Interactive, Fabric Ventures, Alameda Research, AirTree Ventures, Reinventure, Apex Capital, and VaynerFund.
Immutable says 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 Immutable’s in-house published NFT games, Gods Unchained and Guild of Guardians.
The market for NFTs surged to new highs in the second quarter of 2021, with $2.5 billion in sales so far this year, up from just $13.7 million in the first half of 2020. With 9,000 transactions per second, instant transaction times, and zero-gas fees for trading or creating NFTs, Immutable enables businesses to create and trade NFTs on the world’s most popular blockchain, Ethereum, while remaining completely carbon-neutral.
Immutable X is the first Layer 2 scaling solution for NFTs on Ethereum, the most used blockchain globally for NFTs. As Ethereum network traffic has increased significantly, transactions are slower and costlier to execute, and security is increasingly important. Immutable X was created with these pain points in mind. The scaling protocol was built with StarkWare’s ZK-rollup, capable of massive scalability without compromising security. Last month, $600m was hacked on less secure scaling solutions which rely on centralized “bridges” for their connection to Ethereum, rather than zero-knowledge proofs.
“NFT trading is a terrible mainstream user experience right now. It’s expensive, illiquid, and the only existing scaling solutions compromise on the most important thing – the security and user-base of Ethereum. We want businesses to create their game, marketplace, or NFT application within hours via APIs, with a mainstream user experience. No blockchain programming required,” commented Robbie Ferguson, co-founder at Immutable.
“We have been encouraged by the strong momentum around the Ethereum ecosystem, and are excited by the prospects of this next-generation scalability infrastructure broadening accessibility for a new wave of blockchain game developers. The future of asset trading is digital and in-game items and in-game digital assets will broadly move onto the blockchain. To support and accelerate this shift, the industry is in need of a scalable, fast, efficient and trusted blockchain layer. With Immutable we have found the best team and product in the market to make this industry shift a reality,” said Jens Hilgers, Founding Partner at BITKRAFT Ventures.
“Immutable is an exciting business, with a first class management team, and a transformative technology at the centre of a rapidly evolving market. We are delighted to be working with Immutable on this capital raising, which will give the business the financial support to further enhance its position as a market leader in gaming and other verticals, where the company already has a strong reputation and established user base,” commented Zeb Rice, a Founding Partner at King River Capital
From collectible trading card NFTs to fashion NFTs, Immutable’s technology partnerships span across multiple industries. Immutable is responsible for launching one of blockchain’s most successful games, Gods Unchained, which is led by Chris Clay, the former Game Director of Magic the Gathering Arena.
Other notable projects include upcoming support on OpenSea (NFT marketplace), Mintable (NFT marketplace), RTFKT studios (fashion NFT artists), Ecomi / VeVe Collectibles (licensed collectibles), Medal.TV (world’s largest gaming clips website), HighRise (social sandbox), TokenTrove (collectibles marketplace), SuperFarm (defi NFT farm), and Epics.GG (whitelabel marketplace platform for NFTs).
Source : Ayo
