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Immutable X: Gods Unchained Rollout

By

Alex

Saccardo

2021-03-04

Update June 21, 2021: Stage 4 is here! We've been able to merge a few stages together by minting Genesis, Core (Meteorite), Etherbots, and Promo cards all at once. This bundles minting actions from stage 4, 5 and even some of "beyond" into stage 4.

Head to Immutable X

Gods Unchained set out to solve a problem: users don’t own their in-game assets. Since then, both the community and developers have been on a quest to expand play to earn and build a healthy trading economy. With Immutable X, we’re on the verge of finally making this a reality – joining a digital exchange that will allow us to mint assets, and for mortals to collect, play, trade, and sell cards & items as they see fit. 

The rollout for this is on its way, and Gods Unchained users are being given the exclusive chance to be first adopters as the Gods Unchained marketplace will arrive before anything else. The exciting part? We’re not alone here. Immutable X is being opened in stages, and down the line other crypto games, items, and developers will be joining the Immutable X ecosystem – finally cementing the Ethereum network as the thriving, decentralized powerhouse we’ve all known it to be.

Contents:

  1. What is Immutable X?
  2. Rollout Stages:
  3. Early linking & Trial of the Gods minting
  4. The marketplace opens with Trial of the Gods trading
  5. Minting activates
  6. Genesis minting <– We are here
  7. Core fusing in the Forge
  8. Welcome Set and Shadow/Gold Core minting
  9. A new era for NFTS

Remind me, what is Immutable X? 

Immutable X is the first layer 2 trading solution for NFTs on Ethereum, providing mainstream scalability and gas-free transactions. The Ethereum network is awesome; it is and always has been the solution to play to earn, it just needs a little help when it comes to scaling NFT economies. 

Immutable X will allow us to unlock game mechanics like fusing and rewards, while supercharging secondary markets by ensuring you can trade your assets without worrying how much you’ll pay in transaction fees. In short: it solves the largest issues that are currently holding us back.

Rollout Stages

When Immutable X rolls out, it will happen in stages. Getting in early will see you ready to trade once the marketplace is sent live and card sets make their way onto the exchange. The largest and highest priority task for us is Trial of the Gods and Genesis minting and trading, with Core fusing, trinkets, boards and chests following down the line.

Stage 1: Early linking & Trial of the Gods minting

This is your opportunity to get in on the ground floor. Wallet linking will open exclusively to Gods Unchained users, allowing you to link your wallets to the exchange before trading goes live. Doing so will mean your Trial of the Gods assets will be among the first to be minted, and you’ll be ready to trade once the marketplace activates.

Why are Trial of the Gods cards being minted first? As this set is yet to be minted, it will be the quickest and easiest set to mint in Immutable X, taking a fraction of the time that Genesis will take. This allows trading to open far quicker than if we were to pre-mint every existing Gods Unchained card before launch. 

In this early stage, only the valid Trial of the Gods cards that you have purchased before signing up will be minted in Immutable X. This means you’ll be able to see all your Trial of the Gods cards in your inventory, but you won’t be able to trade them just yet. Any Trial of the Gods cards you purchase beyond this moment will be usable in game, but won’t be minted to Immutable X until stage 3. 

Stage 2: The marketplace opens with Trial of the Gods trading

When the marketplace opens, accounts that linked to Immutable X before 4:30am PDT, April 7, 2021 will see all their valid Trial of the Gods cards become tradable in Immutable X. Accounts that link after this stage will still be able to trade and purchase cards that are listed by other users on Immutable X, but any Trial of the Gods cards they own won’t be minted or appear in the exchange until the minting feature reactivates.

This will be the first instance of peer to peer trading on the exchange, and we are insanely eager to witness this in action. It’s the start of a new era for Gods Unchained, and it’s almost here. 

The same rules apply as stage 1: Any new purchases from the Gods Unchained store will not be minted until stage 3 (but will still be usable in-game). The difference here is that all minted cards will be tradable. Did we mention we’re excited for trading? If not: we are excited for trading. 

This will also spell the end of the Balancing Phase for the Trials set, setting each card’s stats in stone. The set will remain on sale from godsunchained.com until sold out, however. This is something we’ve held off doing in the past as we haven’t wanted sales to cannibalise secondary trades, but we are currently of the mind that this may no longer be the case – believing it will actually help mortals get the cards they want quicker instead of cycling packs. We’d be keen to get your thoughts on this process in particular in the #feedback channel in our Discord, so give us a shout!

It’s important to note that the Immutable X marketplace will begin as a simplified version of the current Gods Unchained Marketplace with reduced filters and search functionality, but these will be built into Immutable X as we go along. The main priority is to unlock trading for all mortals, giving a deeper meaning to card ownership.

Stage 3: Minting

Update April 22, 2021: Stage 3 sees minting reactivate, starting off slow, but slowly picking up in speed as we move along. To start with, Trial of the Gods minting will be activated by triggers in the Gods Unchained launcher, these are logging in, and playing a game. In order to get your assets minted, perform these actions and your assets will be minted over the next few days.

As we move through this stage, minting will become more intuitive. Working towards a system where all valid card purchases from the Gods Unchained store will be minted in Immutable X from purchase. The ease of execution seen here will be the same for all future sets, and these (including the next expansion) will be ready to mint in Immutable X from release.

For those familiar with the current Balancing Phase rules, this marks a point of change as balancing and minting overlap. For future sets, we’ve been considering opening up trading while the balancing phase is still active for the reasons mentioned above, namely: to allow mortals to get the exact cards they want for their decks when they want them.

Stage 4: Genesis minting

UPDATE: 22/06/21 This step combined minting previously pegged for future steps. With this we have seen Etherbots, Core (Meteorite), and Promo cards being minted to Immutable X too! All these cards are now tradable on the Immutable X Marketplace, with TokenTrove and OpenSea to follow once the Immutable X integration is fully complete. You can learn more about this stage here.

It’s time to free Genesis cards from the shackles of gas! *breathes in* ... sorry, we needed to get that out. This is a big deal for us, and many of you. 

Genesis cards hold a special place in Gods Unchained as these made up our first official set. The Genesis set completely sold out, which means there are over 7 million Genesis cards in the wild. From the start, we built Gods Unchained with longevity in mind, which is why there are such a large amount of cards in circulation, inhibiting the practice of hoarding particular sets.

In recent times, this set has been held hostage by something else entirely – high gas fees – rendering trading an extremely costly endeavour. For those who have been with us since Genesis days, it brings us great pleasure to say these cards will be minted in Immutable X, freeing them from the shackles of gas and opening them up to functional trading. 

The large number of cards out there combined with the fact they live in multiple wallets means bringing these cards onto the platform will be a huge endeavour, being the main reason they are following a new set such as Trial of the Gods and not preceding it. These cards have been tradable for the longest of all Gods Unchained cards, and we’re making sure they remain so.

We’re currently ironing out the details of what this process looks like, but we are refining a solution that will ensure Genesis users won’t need to fork out any ETH during the move to Immutable X. At 150 gwei (the gwei cost at the time of writing), this process will save Genesis owners ~$150 million USD in transfer fees. Future transfers into Immutable X will cost gas (as the cost is created by moving from Ethereum: Layer 1 to Immutable X: Layer 2), but as all future cards will be minted straight to Immutable X, this won’t be an ongoing issue for Gods Unchained users.

At this point, we’ll be working with third-party platforms (the legends at TokenTrove and OpenSea) to delist Gods Unchained cards to make way for the Immutable X marketplace, as well as retiring the Official Gods Unchained Marketplace… a market that served us well, but it’s all to make way for something far better. Goodbye old friend.

There may be a small window where Genesis cards aren’t tradable as this transition occurs, but trading will resume shortly once Genesis cards are minted in Immutable X.

Stage 5: Core fusing in the Forge

The Forge is the key to one of our main play to earn mechanics: card fusing. This is the process of collecting multiple versions of a card from playing matches, and fusing them into a higher quality version of that card that will be minted in Immutable X. To start off with, the Forge will reopen fusing plain cards into Meteorite. This essentially means if you have two plain cards that don’t exist on the layer 2 network, you’ll be able to mint them into a Meteorite NFT. By doing so, you’ll then be able to trade this NFT on Immutable X with other mortals, or play your fine lookin' Meteorite card in-game. Down the line, fusing into higher quality cards such as Shadow and Gold will also be introduced.

Stage 6: Welcome Set and Shadow/Gold Core minting

The next step sees us minting Shadow Core cards, namely those received from Prize Draws (like the Shadow/Mythic Draws). As well as Welcome Set shinies that you have picked up from the Star Store.

Beyond: Chests and items

For now, chests will remain on third-party marketplaces and stay tradable on Ethereum Layer 1, though this may change for future seasons. When a chest is opened, cards will be minted directly into Immutable X. 

While trinkets, boards, and card backs are NFTs, we’re prioritizing the minting of our major card sets first, following with these assets once card set minting is complete.

The Immutable X ecosystem

After the Gods Unchained Marketplace has been reborn on Immutable X and trading has recommenced for GU users, the exchange will begin to open up to other games and developers. This is beneficial to everyone involved, from developer to trader, trader to player, as it helps grow the Immutable X ecosystem and make Ethereum a hub of trading possibilities once again. 

One of the first to follow Gods Unchained will be Guild of Guardians, a game developed by Stepico Games and published by Immutable. It’s a multiplayer, free-to-play mobile RPG where players can earn assets in-game, and trade items and heroes in a real world economy. Immutable’s publishing department will be providing marketing and design support to Stepico Games, but the Gods Unchained team will remain focused on GU: building out Eucos, the Arena, new expansions, and beyond. We’re keen to see how Stepico takes their previous success with mobile games and applies it to the blockchain gaming space. Check out the full Guild of Guardians announcement

From there we’ll be joined by a slew of Ethereum devs and doers minting in Immutable X, including Illuvium (auto-battler RPG) , SuperfarmDAO (DeFi NFT farm),  Epics.GG (collectibles),  Lucid Sight (MLB Champions Baseball, Crypto Space Commander), and War Riders (post-apocalyptic MMO) to name a few, and there's many more to come. More Ethereum assets means more trading, and more trading means more action on the Ethereum mainnet. Basically, the bigger the community grows, the stronger Ethereum becomes.

A new era for NFTS

This process will take some time, with stages taking different lengths to roll out depending on the effort involved. The Genesis stage, for example, is a big feat, but one that we are approaching with gusto. 

The most exciting part about Immutable X is that it means Ethereum is here to stay, excelling thanks to a world-class scaling solution. Immutable X as a trading ecosystem makes Ethereum more accessible, and we believe we’ll finally be seeing the Gods Unchained community, old and new, interacting and trading in meaningful ways. 

Game assets are just the first step to making digital worlds real, the next is in the hands of the players, traders, and collectors joining Immutable X.

To stay up to date with the latest Immutable X info, stay tuned to the Gods Unchained and Immutable Twitter to ensure you don’t miss a beat. 

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