Immutable is reworking the internals of Immutable Chain, the network its games run on. The plan is to rebuild the chain on OP Stack so it becomes an Ethereum rollup. Blocks will come every 1 second instead of every 2, and bridging will rely on proofs verified on Ethereum. Immutable is aiming to make the switch in the middle of 2027.
Two people signed the announcement: Alex Connolly, CTO, and Ermyas Abebe, Head of Blockchain.
What players will notice
With blocks landing twice as often, on-chain actions should confirm sooner. Immutable says transactions will get slightly more expensive after the move. It also says gas on Immutable Chain is extremely cheap right now.
Pulling assets out through the native bridge will be slower, with native withdrawals taking around 7 days. Immutable expects most bridging volume to keep going through faster liquidity bridges.
- Block time: 2s to 1s
- Transaction costs: slightly higher
- Native withdrawals: around 7 days
- Target date: middle of 2027
Block production will pause for several hours during the migration. Immutable says it will announce the date well ahead of time once it is confirmed.
Changes to the bridge
Right now, Immutable Chain’s native bridge runs on Axelar, an external cross-chain messaging network. Once the migration is done, withdrawals will be checked directly against state commitments posted to Ethereum. The chain’s data availability will move to Ethereum too.
At launch, Immutable will use permissioned fault proofs, and zk-validity proofs will follow later. The company says OP Stack will also let it pick up protocol upgrades, EVM upgrades and security patches faster.
App teams and infrastructure providers should read Immutable’s documentation for the exact modifications and any changes they need to make on their side. Immutable says its account managers will help teams through the process.
Testnet shuts down for games
By the end of 2026, Immutable will deprecate its current testnet for game usage. According to the company, the public testnet was a poor place to test complex game flows because gas was cheap and third-party integrations were missing. Most games test on their own local chains or go straight to the production chain.
Immutable says it mainly used the testnet to try out upcoming chain releases. That job will now be handled through the OP ecosystem.