Two Chains Become One: Inside Immutable's Big Gaming Network Merger

Most game companies worry about one platform at a time. Immutable spent years running two blockchains of its own, each with its own rules, tools and marketplace. In February 2026, the company began closing that chapter, migrating everything on its original network, Immutable X, onto its newer one, Immutable zkEVM. The plan was announced on 8 April 2025; the final asset move was scheduled for around 25 February 2026.

It sounds like back-office housekeeping, the kind of server migration players only notice when it goes wrong. It is actually one of the clearest stories about how web3 gaming has changed since the 2021 boom.

A game studio that built a chain

Immutable was founded in 2018 in Sydney by brothers Robbie and James Ferguson. Unusually, it is both a blockchain developer and a game publisher. Its first big project was Gods Unchained, a free-to-play digital card game in which cards are NFTs that players can sell or trade.

The trouble was Ethereum's fees. Trading a card could cost more than the card. So Immutable built a scaling network for its own game and then opened it up to others. Immutable X launched on 8 April 2021, built on zero-knowledge rollup technology from StarkWare. A rollup batches thousands of transactions, proves they are valid with cryptography, and posts that proof to Ethereum. The result: players could mint and trade NFTs with zero gas fees.

Immutable X took off. Gods Unchained, Guild of Guardians, Illuvium, Ember Sword, IMVU, Habbo and many others built on it, and marketplaces from Rarible to OKX plugged in. In 2022, GameStop even launched its NFT marketplace on Immutable X (it later said it would shut the marketplace in February 2024). In June 2022, Immutable announced a $500 million fund to back games building on its network.

Why build a second chain?

Immutable X had a limit. It was brilliant at minting and trading NFTs, but it did not support general smart contracts. Developers couldn't write their own on-chain rules for crafting, upgrading or complex economies. They were confined to what Immutable's APIs allowed.

So in March 2023, Immutable announced a partnership with Polygon to build a new network. Immutable zkEVM combined Polygon's zero-knowledge technology with Immutable's gaming tools, and it is fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), meaning any developer who knows Ethereum's tools can build on it. It reached mainnet in early 2024.

That left Immutable with two networks, two sets of developer tools and two pools of players and liquidity (the amount of buying and selling activity in a market). Every game had to pick a side, and players often had to work out which network their items were actually on.

How the merger worked

The plan set out in April 2025 promised that most players would not need to lift a finger:

• Passport users (Immutable's built-in game wallet) saw their assets appear on zkEVM automatically.
• MetaMask and other EVM wallet users kept the same wallet address, with their items now on zkEVM.
• Magic Wallet users might need to export their keys.
• Players who wanted out could withdraw to Ethereum's main network before the cut-off, or opt out of the automatic move.
• Immutable said it would cover migration and gas costs, and that the migration was "trustless", meaning it never takes custody of user funds. It published the migration contracts so auditors could check them.

The timeline ran in two steps. From 11 February 2026, the Immutable X bridge contract began its upgrade, followed by a mandatory two-week security delay, and Immutable X became read-only: no new minting or trading. The full automated migration was set to complete around 25 February 2026. The Immutable Link wallet tool was phased out in favour of Passport.

For developers, the change was bigger. Immutable X APIs were deprecated, collection addresses changed (Immutable provided an API to map old to new), and many studios used the moment to switch their item collections from the ERC-721 standard (one-of-a-kind tokens) to ERC-1155 (a standard that handles stacks of identical items more efficiently).

Guild of Guardians, the mobile RPG Immutable publishes, had already completed its migration before the announcement, acting as the test case. Immutable said several games had "pioneered this upgrade" before it was rolled out to everyone else, which gave studios a working example to copy rather than a blank page.

What should a player have checked? Three things: that their items appeared in the same wallet on the new network; that any game they still play had confirmed its own migration; and, for anyone using an older wallet type, that they had exported keys or moved assets before Immutable X went read-only. Immutable's promise was that nothing would be lost, and the migration contracts were published so outsiders could verify that claim rather than take it on trust.

The bigger picture: fewer players, fewer chains

Why do it now? The honest answer is that web3 gaming got smaller. Industry tracker DappRadar counted nearly 7 million daily unique active wallets in gaming at the start of 2025, falling to about 4.66 million by the third quarter. Running two networks for a shrinking audience made little sense.

Consolidation also helps liquidity. A card or skin is easier to sell when every buyer is on the same chain. By early 2026, Immutable said its combined network had processed more than 227 million transactions and counted 680+ games building or live, including Might & Magic: Fates, Ubisoft's collectible card game, which arrived on 4 February 2026.

The token market, meanwhile, has been brutal. In April 2025, when the merger was announced, IMX traded at about $0.39 and ranked 99th by market capitalisation, after briefly dropping out of the top 100 that week. (Token prices are volatile; these are dated snapshots, not a forecast.)

By the numbers

• 2018: Immutable founded in Sydney
• 8 Apr 2021: Immutable X launches with zero gas fees
• $500 million: ecosystem fund announced in June 2022
• Mar 2023: Polygon partnership for Immutable zkEVM
• 11 Feb 2026: Immutable X turns read-only
• ~25 Feb 2026: automated asset migration scheduled to finish
• 680+: games building or live, as Immutable counted in early 2026

WGC's take, and what to watch

The Immutable merger is the opposite of the 2021 playbook, when every project wanted its own chain, token and marketplace. In 2026 the winners are simplifying. For players, one network means fewer bridges, fewer confusing wallet steps and more buyers for the items they own.

What to watch: whether games that used to live on Immutable X keep their communities after the move; whether Immutable's push on Passport and its Immutable Play platform brings in players who don't think of themselves as crypto users; and whether other networks follow the same path. Ronin did something similar in May 2026, as our Ronin explainer shows, and Polygon's role behind the scenes is covered in our Polygon long read.