War Riders is supercharging its game with ZK-rollup. Partnering with Immutable-X L2 based on StarkWare.

War Riders has always been about pushing boundaries in blockchain-based gaming. Our NFTs are an incredible innovation with unlimited possibilities, but current gas + scaling limitations have prevented us from realizing our vision. At WR, we believe that scaling needs to happen without compromising on decentralization or moving off the Ethereum network.

When exploring the possible scaling opportunities we considered the following:

• Unlimited scalability
• Instant transaction confirmation
• Mainstream-quality UX (minimal friction, low fees for transactions and trades)
• No compromise on user security
• Retaining access to Ethereum’s ecosystem and network effects

Unfortunately, existing solutions didn’t fulfill these needs.

What Is Immutable X?

Immutable X is a scaling engine for NFTs, developed by Immutable who has worked in-depth on blockchain games for years with titles like Gods Unchained.

Immutable decided to be the first to build a ZK-Rollup-based solution for NFTs, in partnership with global leader StarkWare. Rollups are a new breakthrough Layer-2 technology that not only met, but exceeded all of Immutable’s requirements, and that Vitalik Buterin himself expects “to be a cornerstone of Ethereum scaling.”

How does it work?

Rollups consist of a smart contract and an off-chain environment. The smart contract only has two tasks: process deposits and withdrawals, and verify that everything happening off-chain is following the rules.

At a high level, large numbers of transactions in the off-chain environment are ‘rolled-up’ into a big batch, then the smart contract verifies the validity of those transactions using either SNARKs or STARKs proofs and plenty of complex mathematics. Once a proof has been accepted on-chain, users have immediate confirmation that those transactions were valid and are now immutable. Users can withdraw immediately and no-one is able to attack the system, regardless of the volume of funds flowing through. In terms of scale, rollups have been able to reach speeds of thousands of transactions per second, and are capable of reaching even higher limits in the future.

How does the War Riders community benefit?

Historically, NFTs have been rather primitive. The user experience behind them is clunky, the number of transactions the Ethereum network can handle is limited, and when the network is being heavily used, this results in extraordinary high gas fees for creating and exchanging NFTs that users have to bear the costs of. This limits what we as developers can do with War Riders, how we reward users, and the costs required for our users to participate.

Moving to a ZK-Rollup, we retain all the incredible benefits of decentralized ledgers without these limitations. Without paying gas fees to create new items, we can build more attractive, more accessible products that can rapidly grow past the niche early-adopter phase we find ourselves currently in. Even better, it means you’ll no longer need to pay gas fees every time you want to trade or transfer an NFT.

Is Immutable X Safe? Can it be tampered with?

Immutable X inherits security from Ethereum, rather than using its own validators or consensus algorithms. As such, it should be the most secure L2 environment to exist. You’re always able to withdraw your assets back on-chain, even if the Immutable API goes offline, or in a meltdown scenario where Immutable and StarkWare (Immutable’s technology partner) denies user requests.

There are two different ways data can be stored through Immutable X. One where data is stored on-chain (some gas fees for minting), and one where data is stored off-chain (no gas fees for minting, stored by Data Availability Committee).

The initial version of Immutable X will store asset data off-chain, but will soon upgrade to Volition, a hybrid on-chain/off-chain data solution, that allows users to dynamically pick where they want their data stored. You can read more about Volition here.

What’s coming

We are hoping to launch our first sales on Immutable X in the Q1 of 2021. In a meantime, our private gaming alpha is fully functional. Download the game, link your wallet and start playing.

Keep an eye on our Twitter and Discord for an exclusive giveaway of an Immutable X vehicle.

Lastly, there is still time to claim free garage ownership tokens to earn passive BZN income. All NFT users are welcome.

Mine or Die!