Shalini Nagarajan

The foundation tasked with promoting development on Ethereum Layer-2 project, ImmutableX, is reportedly trying to sell a certain amount of its IMX tokens to private investors.



Digital Worlds Ltd. NFTS, a Cayman Islands-based non-profit foundation, which issues the <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/imx">IMX</a> token, is technically separate from the Immutable Group, the Australian startup which develops the blockchain, and Immutable previously disclosed a <a href="https://twitter.com/Immutable/status/1582518588321148928" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">partnership</a> with Digital Worlds to reward developers and community members with IMX tokens.



A spokesperson for Immutable, reached for comment after publication, noted &#8220;the sale proceeds will all go to the Foundation, not Immutable.&#8221;



Immutable co-founder James Ferguson is listed as the entity’s director, <a href="https://www.afr.com/technology/young-rich-listers-push-cayman-islands-crypto-sale-amid-redundancies-20230303-p5cp92" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Australian Financial Review</a> reported Tuesday.



Immutable has so far raised nearly $280 million from investors including Tencent, Alameda Research, AirTree Ventures and Arrington XRP Capital, according to <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/immutable-systems/investor_financials" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Crunchbase</a>.



According to the foundation’s pitch, the impending dominance of tokenization “will turn NFTs into a trillion-dollar asset class.”



The project says that the non-profit has a “$1BN+ war chest for grants.”&nbsp;



Latest figures show Immutable holds IMX tokens worth over $478 million on its own balance sheet, AFR said. According to the project’s <a href="https://www.immutable.com/imx-token" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">website</a>, there are a total of 2 billion IMX tokens, and nearly 20% of these are intended to be just for token sales.



The Immutable spokesperson put the value of IMX on the company&#8217;s balance sheet at $530 million, and added that Immutable &#8220;has never sold any of these tokens and is a long term holder.&#8221;



The pending sales, are from Digital Worlds reserve allocation of 4% of total token supply.



It’s not uncommon for a crypto company to promote and sell its own tokens to investors, as a way to raise capital. Token sales are seen as a popular route for projects to allow investors to get involved in their startups, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lbry-vs-sec-secondary-sales-arent-securities-may-be-good-news-for-ripple">despite lingering legal uncertainty</a> as to their possible status as unregulated securities in the United States.



According to the Immutable <a href="https://support.immutable.com/en/articles/6470640-immutable-x-whitepaper" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">white paper</a>, the IMX is used to pay transaction fees on the protocol, and may be staked to capture a portion of those fees subject to certain activity requirements in governance participation and trading.



A spokesperson told AFR that the private token sale was being led by a major venture capitalist and that it was “more than two times oversubscribed in the first 72 hours.” The project declared that Ferguson’s association with Digital Worlds is only in a personal capacity.



News of the private token sale comes less than two weeks after it emerged that Immutable was <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/polygon-immutable-staff-layoffs">laying off 11% of staff</a>. The startup cited low cash reserves as the reason for the move, the Sydney Morning Herald <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/technology/australia-s-biggest-crypto-gaming-start-up-slashes-staff-20230222-p5cmii.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>, with plans to transfer the responsibility of some areas of game development to external partners.



Immutable disputes that, saying the company has a 4-year cash runway and instead wanted to allocate more resources to the most critical parts of the business. &#8220;[The latest token sale] is in no way related to the small redundancy round by Immutable last month,&#8221; the spokesperson said.



IMX is up about 170% since the start of 2023, according to data compiled by Blockworks.



Updated March 8, 2023 at 5:03 am ET: Added comments from Immutable spokesperson and clarification around the purpose of the foundation and its token sales.



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Australia

Immutable’s Foundation “Quietly” Looks to Raise Cash For IMX Tokens: Report

Ornella Hernandez

<div id="highlights-block_62aca92055048" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>The new fund seeks to establish co-funds with VC partners and issuing grants to developers</li>
 <li>GameFi Investment in the first half of 2022 has reached $3.7 billion, up 99% year over year</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Layer-2 Ethereum scaling solution Immutable plans to launch a $500 million fund to allocate token grants and investments into the Immutable X protocol with the two-fold intention of incentivizing game developers and spurring user adoption of Web3 projects building on the platform.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Building on IMX is some of the biggest gaming developers &amp; IP holders: GameStop, TikTok, Opensea, Illuvium, Ember Sword, VeeFriends &amp; more. We can&#39;t wait to help developers onboard the next billion mainstream users. 🌟Apply at <a href="https://t.co/D1cEyyBiBp">https://t.co/D1cEyyBiBp</a> 6/6&mdash; Immutable | $IMX ⓧ (@Immutable) <a href="https://twitter.com/Immutable/status/1537768355691925504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 17, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



The fund, which is a mix of both cash and Immutable X’s native token IMX, combines assets from Animoca Brands, GameStop and VC firms such as Airtree, BITKRAFT, Arrington Capital, Double Peak and King River Capital.&nbsp;



From meeting funding requirements for scaling projects to designating a milestone-based IMX vesting schedule, the focus is on developers.



Current gaming developers and intellectual property holders on Immutable X include TikTok, Illuvium, Ember Sword, GreenPark Sports, ESL, Gary Vee’s Vee Friends, Playco and GameStop, which launched its NFT marketplace via the platform.



The Immutable Developer and Venture Fund also plans to provide partnering game studios with advisory support when it comes to the NFT (non-fungible token) gaming world, tokenomics, game design, community and marketing.



“We’re taking the lessons learned from building two of the blockchain’s biggest games — Gods Unchained and Guild of Guardians — and hiring the smartest people from Web2 studios like Riot Games,” Immutable CEO James Ferguson said in a statement.&nbsp;



The scaling solution&#8217;s other co-founder and president, Robbie Ferguson, added that “gaming is bigger than movies and music combined, and is compounding by 10% every year” with the potential of growing into a trillion dollar ownable economy over the next decade.



In terms of volume for the week gone by, the Harmony blockchain-based game DeFi Kingdoms takes the crown, peaking on June 12 at over $17 million transacted within the game, <a href="https://www.footprint.network/@Bond/GameFi-Overview" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a> to Footprint Analytics. Gaming and decentralized finance (GameFi) fundraising remains steady, up 0.8% month over month, with a total of $7.7 billion raised.



Immutable previously <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/now-is-not-the-time-to-take-our-foot-off-the-pedal-says-immutable-co-founder/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told</a> Blockworks that the company anticipates to continue “aggressive” hiring, thanks to more than four years of funding runway. In March, the Australian unicorn raised $200 million in a series C fundraising round led by Temasek, bringing its valuation to $2.5 billion.



Founded in partnership with StarkWare in 2018, Immutable incorporates StarkWare’s StarkEx zero-knowledge proof technology to roll up thousands of transactions on its own network and commit them to Ethereum with a single transaction.



On Thursday, Immutable <a href="https://twitter.com/Immutable/status/1537573316000894976" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a> a corporate rebrand that includes an updated logo to more clearly differentiate between Immutable, Immutable X and the Immutable Studio, the company said.



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Funding

Immutable Earmarks $500M Fund for Gaming, Web3 Development

Morgan Chittum

<div id="highlights-block_622623f1e5b17" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Staff will go from 170 to 350 full-time employees over the next year, co-founder Robbie Ferguson told Blockworks</li>
 <li>Immutable raised $60 million in Series B funding in September</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Immutable, creator of the NFT-focused layer-2 scaling protocol Immutable X, secured $200 million in Series C funding, launching the Sydney-based startup to a $2.5 billion valuation.



Led by Temasek, investors in the financing round include Animoca Brands, Tencent, ParaFi Capital, Princeville Capital, Arrington Capital, Mirae Asset and Liberty Global.



King River Capital, Prosus Ventures, AirTree Ventures, Declaration Partners, Fabric Ventures, Possible Ventures and Alameda Research all raised their existing investments in Immutable.



&#8220;We&#8217;ll be growing from 170 to 350 people over the next year — investing in a global partnerships and gaming advisory team and tripling our product and engineering teams,” Robbie Ferguson, co-founder of Immutable, told Blockworks.



Immutable made headlines in October for creating Immutable X, which powered TikTok’s NFT (non-fungible token) collection. It was billed as the first layer-2 protocol on Ethereum that allowed instant trading and zero gas fees, which often served as a roadblock for minting NFTs.



Earlier this month, Immutable announced a $100 million joint fund with GameStop for blockchain gaming startups.



The company was founded in 2018 by brothers Robbie and James Ferguson.



“In 2017, we saw NFTs come out with CryptoPunks and [my brother and I] said, ‘This is it,’” Robbie said. “This is going to be massive because there is more uniquely ownable stuff in the world than there is currencies. The ability to have digital property rights is going to be the most important thing.”



In its early years, Immutable was known for creating “<a href="https://godsunchained.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Gods Unchained</a>,” which Robbie described as “the first multiplayer game with NFTs on Ethereum, [all] completely on-chain.”



The company has since expanded, launching tokens such as IMX in September, which sold out on CoinList in under an hour and raised over $12.5 million.



That same month, Immutable <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/layer-2-solution-immutable-closes-60m-series-b-round/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a> a $60 million Series B funding round to boost NFT trading. BITKRAFT Ventures and King River Capital co-led the round, with participation from Alameda Research, Galaxy Interactive, VaynerFund and Apex Capital.



Along with the Monday announcement, Immutable announced new C-suite hires such as former Riot Games exec Justin Hulog. The startup also tapped ex-Shutterfly chief marketing officer, John Boris, as its chief growth officer.



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James Ferguson

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Blockworks Research