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Immutablea maker of blockchain games and a blockchain platform, announced a revolutionary development with its immutable zkEVM blockchain, eliminating gas fees for players engaged in blockchain-based gaming transactions.
The company said this change revolutionizes the player experience, ensuring a smooth and free gaming environment.
As it stands, gas fees – or the commissions users must pay to process their transactions – are among the biggest obstacles to mass adoption of decentralized gaming. While an integral part of any Web3 ecosystem used to incentivize miners or node operators to keep blockchains secure, democratic, and decentralized, transaction fees can also be detrimental and burdensome for players, especially those from traditional gaming communities.
Immutable’s zkEVM, a dedicated gaming blockchain, is a technology designed to redefine the gaming landscape. By offering compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), substantial scalability, and enterprise-grade security, the zkEVM ecosystem powers a big change in the field of Web3 games. This new technology removes user experience barriers posed by gas fees, allowing players to explore and engage in new games cost-effectively.
Gas fees in a blockchain transaction quantify the computational effort required to execute specific operations on the Ethereum network. As every Ethereum transaction requires computing resources to execute, users must pay for these resources in order to protect Ethereum from spam attacks and prevent it from being entangled in endless computing loops.
Powered by Immutable’s zkEVM and the revolutionary Immutable Passport, the gaming ecosystem is now able to completely remove gas fees for users. Game developers leveraging Immutable’s platform have the ability to fund these fees for Immutable Passport users, removing this friction from the player journey, ultimately leading to improved transaction conversion rates and creating a more competitive environment. welcoming to new players.
“There are a few standards in the blockchain space that traditional players simply won’t accept: gas fees fall into this category. To truly appeal to all gamers, Web3 games must be able to offer players a familiar and streamlined user experience, making blockchain components as simple and native as possible,” said Alex Connolly, CTO at Immutable, in a statement . “Gas fees are one of the most prohibitive elements when integrating digital asset ownership into games, and Immutable is setting the new standard by completely removing them from the player experience.”
In addition to adding unnecessary obstacles to the user experience, gas fees also require players to always ensure they have additional funds in the correct wallet, often in the form of a blockchain’s native token for pay transactions, Immutable said. For players, in particular, this means they typically have to jump through multiple hoops (bridging, trading, scaling, etc.) to get the right currency in the right place at the right time, the company said.
To solve this problem once and for all, Immutable zkEVM – a gaming-focused chain that offers full compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, unlimited scalability, and enterprise-grade security – will allow game developers to eliminate the very concept gas fees, making them not only invisible but essentially non-existent to players. This will make trying new games much more affordable by removing the industry’s toughest user experience barriers.
By leveraging Immutable zkEVM, game developers can fund gas fees for everything Immutable passport user, removing these fees entirely to enable frictionless onboarding and increased transaction conversion rates. When the Immutable zkEVM mainnet goes live early next year, Immutable plans to sponsor gas fees for all games in its ecosystem for a limited time to ensure a smooth transition.
Because of all the steps Immutable has taken to ensure Immutable’s zkEVM is gas efficient, the cost to game studios will be negligible: around $500 to $1,000 per 100,000 users, Immutable said. With proper design of the game economy, Immutable believes that gas sponsorship will increase adoption, conversion, and overall revenue for game studios, far exceeding the cost of gas.
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