Gas sponsorship
- Phase 1 - Available now until end of 2024: A promotional period where Immutable will sponsor all gas for Immutable Passport users and mints via the Minting API. Additionally, coming soon, developers will be able to see the gas costs that Immutable is sponsoring for their apps in Hub to prepare developers for paying for gas in phase 2.
- Phase 2 - Available from Jan 2025: Developers will start paying for gas in their projects. We encourage games in particular to be paying for gas for their players. It's important to use the reporting available during phase 1 to budget appropriately for when phase 2 arrives. The Minting API will be offered to all developers in this phase.
- Phase 3 - Available in Mid 2025: We'll give developers granular control over which types of transactions they want to sponsor and which players should pay for.
Gas sponsorship
Exposing gas to the end user is one of the highest friction changes any developer can make to their app. To illustrate how much friction gas can add to your user experience, here's an analogy: Imagine you're trying to buy something on Amazon, when you get to the checkout screen, there is a new fee that you've never heard of, and you can only pay this new fee in a currency that you've also never heard of, and there are no instructions where to acquire this alien sounding currency. Adding gas to the purchase flow for a web3 asset adds this much friction for most users.
On the Immutable zkEVM, all games, marketplaces, and other dApps will be able to seamlessly sponsor gas fees for Immutable Passport users. This means that users that interact with your game or marketplace through Passport will never have to learn about the foreign and confusing concept of gas! This is a massive reduction in friction for your user experience.
We refer to this concept as Gas Free for Gamers.
Why "Free for Gamers"?
Our belief is that games should treat the cost of this sponsorship like their traditional server costs. Just as you wouldn’t to see AWS fees surfaced to you during gameplay, likewise we shouldn't surface gas fees during gameplay. In order to save users from the confusion and distraction of gas, games should sponsor gas fees. In exchange for sponsoring gas fees, you get users with higher retention and conversion rates. A more imersive playing experience is a more profitable experience.
With proper game economy design, gas sponsorship can increase player adoption, conversion, and overall revenue for a game studio. As gas fees on Immutable zkEVM will be extremely low to begin with, this will be economically viable for the vast majority of studios and is highly recommended for games that want to attract a wide variety of players.
| Action | Number of Transactions | Gas Used | Monthly Cost (USD at an $IMX price of $2.4 USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trades (1 per MAU) | 100,000 | 21,500,000,000 | $510.70 |
| Transfers (5 per MAU) | 500,000 | 12,508,300,000 | $297.11 |
| Mints (5 per MAU) | 500,000 | 1,272,500,000 | $30.23 |
| Total Monthly Cost | $838.04 | Monthly Cost per User | $0.008 |
NOTE: The above calculations use a price per unit of gas of 10 Gwei-IMX. Read more about the 'Price Limit' in Chain Configuration.
Who can use gas sponsorship?
Gas sponsorship is available today for all Passport users and game studios minting assets via the Minting API. And, to clearly point out some actions where gas sponsorship is currently not possible:
- Transactions from non-Passport wallets (e.g. Metamask)
- Minting via any means other than the Minting API
How will this work?
Until phase 2 arrives, there's no action required from developers because Immutable will sponsor gas is phase 1.
When phase 2 arrives, here are the 4 simple steps that will happen:
- To make your app gas-free for your users, you'll need to setup your funding methods and enable your project in the Immutable Hub.
- Players sign transactions via their wallets to perform on-chain actions.
- If the transaction was signed from a Passport wallet, and the relevant application has gas sponsorship enabled, then Immutable will submit the transaction (gas-free for the player).
- Immutable will recoup the cost from the counterparty (e.g. the game studio, marketplace, etc). This will be debited from the account that you've previously setup in the Immutable Hub.
- All minting requests via the Minting API will be debited from your Immutable Hub account balance.
Phases of availability
Gas Free for Gamers is available now on Immutable zkEVM Mainnet. The following table outlines when features and sponsorship will be available. For game builders, the following conditions will apply:
| Phase | Duration | Who will pay for gas for transaction in your game | Available features to administer gas spend |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Now - Dec 2024 | Immutable will pay during this promotional period* | Dashboards within Immutable Hub to track gas spending |
| 2 | Jan 2024 - Mid 2025 | You as the builder will pay. As a game builder, you'll have the option to top up pre-payments. If you run out of Balance, the Relayer will ask the user to pay, which is a poor user experience. | Self-service tools available in Hub |
| 3 | From Mid 2025 | You will have the option to continue paying or ask your users to pay | Self-service tools available in Hub to set who pays |
Different treatment for Marketplaces: the norm here is that traders themselves pay for gas. As such, marketplace integrations will follow the below pattern:
| Phase | Duration | Who will pay for gas for transaction in your marketplace | Available features to administer gas spend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 | Now - Sep 2024 | Immutable will pay during this promotional period*. You are free to use this as a promotional campaign for your traders | Dashboards within Immutable Hub to track gas spending |
| Phase 2 | Sep 2024 - 2025 | Relayer will ask the user to pay. | Self-service tools available in Hub |
| Phase 3 | From 2025 | You will have the option pay or ask your users to pay | Self-service tools available in Hub to set who pays |
*Promotional period conditions
During the Phase 1 promotional period, Immutable will support your project by paying for gas incurred in transactions by your users. However the following conditions apply and Immutable reserves the right to discontinue the offer to you should you break our terms of usage.
Immutable will only pay for gas for the following use cases in Passport & the Minting API:(1) All transactions submitted from Passport by players, for example:- Buying and selling all assets or currencies in Passport
- Atomically crafting new assets via Minting API in Passport (e.g. atomically burning N assets to mint a new asset)
- Updating metadata during crafting in a signed transaction from a Passport user
- Minting reward assets through the Minting API
- Minting new assets that are the result of crafting
- Minting a new asset from other than the Minting API
- Crafting a new asset via function call from a metamask wallet
Your project may be banned if you engage in the following:
- Excessive listings (Approval All ERC721)
- Excessive approvals (ERC20)
- Excessive minting via API designed to take advantage of Immutable's free gas promotional period
- Remove approvals
- On chain cancelations
You can read more about this feature in our Blogpost.
Future features to optimise gas
Games will be able to configure various parameters for their sponsorships. Over time, we will roll out additional tools to help games optimize their spending on gas subsidies, including the ability to choose whether to sponsor on a per-transaction basis and which user behaviours they would like to sponsor, such as crafting, swaps, deposits, and more. Games will also be able to use these tools to offer different sponsorship levels to different cohorts or geographies, but we recommend most games sponsor all transactions.
In the event of sustained network congestion, applications can shield themselves from spiking gas costs by setting limits on how much gas they're willing to sponsor per transaction or over a given period of time.
Safety controls
Passport has built-in limits designed to prevent bad actors from abusing the sponsorship.