Immutable X was an Ethereum layer-2 network built for NFT games, launched by the Australian company Immutable in 2021 so that players could mint and trade in-game items without paying gas. It no longer runs as a separate chain. Immutable shut it down on 11 February 2026 and moved its assets onto Immutable zkEVM, now a single network called Immutable Chain, and the IMX token carried on there. This article explains what Immutable X was, why it was merged, what IMX does today and what to check if you still hold assets from the old network.
Risk note: IMX is a volatile cryptocurrency and can lose most or all of its value. This is background reading, not financial advice or a recommendation to buy.
Immutable X at a glance
| Company | Immutable, Sydney, founded in 2018 by Robbie Ferguson, James Ferguson and Alex Connolly |
| Network type | Ethereum layer-2 using StarkWare’s StarkEx engine |
| Launched | 2021 |
| Shut down | 11 February 2026, merged into Immutable zkEVM |
| Token | IMX, maximum supply of 2 billion |
Company details come from Wikipedia’s page on Immutable; the supply figure is from CoinGecko’s IMX page.
Why Immutable built its own layer-2
Immutable started out making games, and its best known title is the card game Gods Unchained (our Gods Unchained guide covers how it plays today). In 2018 and 2019, every card trade on Ethereum cost a gas fee, and in busy periods that fee could be higher than the card was worth. That is a poor experience for a game where players open packs and swap cards all the time.
Immutable’s answer was to move the trading off Ethereum’s main chain while still settling it there. In 2020 the team told Decrypt that StarkWare’s StarkEx would be its scalability engine. StarkEx bundles thousands of transactions, proves them with a cryptographic proof and posts that proof to Ethereum. Players got free minting and trading, and the assets stayed tied to Ethereum.
The approach worked for games and NFT marketplaces. It had one big limit, though. StarkEx was a custom system, so developers could not deploy normal Ethereum smart contracts on it or use the usual tools.
From two chains to Immutable Chain
To fix that limit, Immutable and Polygon Labs announced in March 2023 that they would build Immutable zkEVM, a second network that can run standard Ethereum contracts and uses IMX for gas. It launched in early 2024. For about a year Immutable ran both networks side by side, which split players, assets and liquidity across two places.
In April 2025 Immutable said it would fold Immutable X into zkEVM. Decrypt reported that zkEVM had processed nearly 150 million transactions since its launch and that Guild of Guardians had already completed its own move. Users of Immutable Passport would see their assets appear on zkEVM automatically; people using other wallets such as MetaMask would have them transferred to their main wallet.
For players the merger mostly simplifies things: one network, one place to trade and one gas token. For developers it meant more work. The same Decrypt report said the old Immutable X APIs would be deprecated, that collection addresses would change, and that Immutable would provide an API to map each old address to its new one. If you look up an old collection on a block explorer and find nothing, that address change is the likely reason.
The merger took longer than first planned. Immutable’s migration repository on GitHub gives the final dates: the Immutable X chain was sunset on 11 February 2026, which was also the last day for manual withdrawals, and an automated migration of the remaining funds to zkEVM ran from 5 to 9 March 2026. When we visited the repository on 8 October 2026, it described that process as finished.
What IMX does now
IMX did not disappear with the old chain. CoinGecko lists four uses for it on the unified network:
- It is the gas token, so every transaction on Immutable Chain is paid in IMX.
- Protocol fees are partly paid in IMX; CoinGecko puts that share at 20% of network transaction fees.
- Holders can stake it and receive rewards funded by those fees.
- It carries votes on ecosystem proposals.
Staking moved to zkEVM on 19 June 2025. According to eGamers’ report on the change, IMX staked on the old network was unstaked and returned to wallets, and the new system only pays rewards to stakers who also trade at least one NFT on connected marketplaces in each 14-day period. In other words, the rewards are aimed at people who use the network, not passive holders.
Supply is the other thing to understand. When we visited CoinGecko on 8 October 2026, it listed both the total and the maximum supply at 2 billion IMX. Tokens held back for the team, investors and the ecosystem have been released over several years, and each release adds sellers to the market. Check the current unlock calendar on a data site before you buy, because a large release can move the price on its own.
Games on Immutable
The Decrypt piece on the merger named Guild of Guardians, Gods Unchained, Illuvium, RavenQuest, Space Nation Online, Immortal Rising 2 and Treeverse among the games on the platform. Wikipedia adds that Immutable runs the marketplace for Ubisoft’s Might & Magic: Fates. Some of these games had to update their own systems; Gods Unchained, for example, told players that tokens left on Immutable X were no longer supported in the game and should be bridged to zkEVM.
The company has raised serious money for this. In March 2022 it closed a $200 million Series C led by Temasek, with Tencent and Animoca Brands taking part, at a $3.5 billion valuation. It also had to cut at least 20 jobs a few months later when the crypto market fell. Funding of that size shows the bet investors made on blockchain gaming. It says nothing about what the token will do next.
If you still hold Immutable X assets
Most people do not need to do anything. Wallet addresses stayed the same, and standard tokens and NFTs were migrated for users. Three cases deserve a check, though.
If you started a withdrawal from Immutable X on or before 11 February 2026 and never finalised it on Ethereum, you have to complete it yourself through the bridge. Immutable’s GitHub page links to a guide for that, and to a key registration tool for withdrawals that fail with a “USER_UNREGISTERED” error.
If you bought IMX on an exchange, nothing changed for you. The exchange handles the network side.
If someone messages you offering help with “the IMX migration”, ignore them. The official process is over and needs no seed phrase. Use only links from Immutable’s own site or GitHub.
Who IMX suits
IMX is a bet on one company’s gaming network becoming the default home for Ethereum games. If you play titles on Immutable you will need a little for gas, and that is a reasonable reason to hold some. As a long-term holding it depends on games keeping players and on new releases choosing Immutable over rival chains, Beam among them (see our explainer on Beam).
We compare IMX with the other major gaming tokens in our page on the best gaming crypto coins. Should you decide to buy, use a large exchange, check that the withdrawal network is the one your wallet supports, and start with a small test transfer. Our list of the best exchanges for gaming tokens is a good place to begin.