👈 Back to the Immutables’ Manifesto

To appreciate the project and have a better time discussing with the community, it’s best to have some understanding about the problem Immutable X is working to help solve.

Ethereum and NFTs

Note that this assumes you have some understanding of blockchains and NFTs already. If not, please read NFT and blockchain basics

Ethereum has been experiencing the steepest growth curve of any network in history. It has a market cap of more than USD 300 billion as of Feb 2022 (already about half of Visa and Mastercard’s market cap combined!)

NFTs are the future of digital asset ownership. Importantly, the vast majority of NFT innovation, volume and successful applications are taking place on Ethereum. NFT trading volume has grown from USD 13.7 million in the first half of 2020 to USD 2.5 billion in the first half of 2021. And we’ve only just scratched the surface of NFTs’ potential.

Hurdles with Ethereum

Despite the overall dominance of Ethereum, and the clear demand for NFTs, there are substantial hurdles to overcome. For Ethereum to become the underlying platform in scaling NFTs to a global audience these are the challenges we see:

• Low Scalability - Network congestion, slow transaction times, and expensive fees
• Poor User Experience - NFT experiences are currently confusing, have poor recovery mechanisms, and do not display the necessary information to help users make informed purchasing decisions
• Slow Developer Experience - There’s a massive barrier to entry for new projects as developers are required to learn new programming languages and paradigms
• Illiquidity - NFTs are less liquid than their fungible ERC-20 counterparts since they’re all unique by nature
• Carbon Emissions - The current proof-of-work mechanism of Ethereum is energy intensive. To scale to the masses, the environmental impact needs to be managed

Why does Immutable exist?

<aside> ☝ Key points:

1. Great product and tech: ZK-Rollup, REST APIs, NFT wallets, and Platform SDKs
2. Shared liquidity and orderbook
3. World-class network of customers
4. Legal compliance and customer success
5. Default Marketplace & Transaction History Explorer
6. Carbon Neutral NFTs </aside>

We believe NFT users and developers shouldn’t have to choose between the security and network effects of Ethereum, and are working to create a world-class experience for our users. Immutable X is a protocol for NFTs and helps projects be successful through several solutions:

1. Great Product and Tech

The product and technology was built to address the scalability, user experience, and developer experience issues:

• ZK-Rollup Scaling Engine - Immutable X’s rollup allows for more than 9,000 NFT transfers, trades and mints per second, meeting and exceeding the scale required by mainstream NFT projects. This will be key to bringing NFTs to mainstream applications that millions of people can use.

  The Ethereum ecosystem is likely to be all-in on rollups as a scaling strategy for the near and mid-term future - Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum co-founder