De-mystifying the GU zkEVM Migration, and what it means for gamers (and for us at Gods.Exchange)

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coderad151.788 days agoPeakD6 min read

The Gods Unchained migration process starts today, sort of, and we're still seeing a lot of questions about how it works. So I figured I'd try and clarify a little bit here for people who are still trying to wrap their heads around what's happening. All the information is out there, but I thought it might help to present it without a lot of superfluous flowery language. Said "superfluous flowery language" is linked at the bottom for those who want a deeper dive.

_{Source: KlingAI}

What is it?

Right now, Gods Unchained runs on the IMX L2 network. They're getting rid of the IMX L2 network. So whether it makes sense for GU to move to zkEVM or not, whether there are any tangible benefits at all... it doesn't matter.

They have no choice.

Here's their official reason for the change:

"The migration to Immutable zkEVM is intended to future-proof Gods Unchained, ensuring scalability and unlocking advanced smart contract capabilities. It also positions the game within a broader Web3 gaming ecosystem, fostering potential interoperability and delivering an improved experience for all players."

There's a link to the entire blog post in the sources section down below, but I can save you some time: it's absolutely infuriating, and says very little of actual substance. Here's a fun example!

Q: What new functionality will GU gain?

A: With the move to Immutable zkEVM, Gods Unchained is exploring Improved crafting experiences, Passport integration, A more diverse economy of assets.

So, nothing? Got it. They're exploring options.

That original FAQ has a few important things in it though, that are confirmed in later posts:

Assets (Cards and Cosmetics) will be automatically transferred.
Tokens ($GODS, IMX etc.) will need to be manually bridged.
Transactions on IMX zkEVM cost gas, unless you use Passport, which you can't.

What's in it for us?

In the short term, absolutely nothing except a huge headache.

In the future, maybe some things. The biggest thing really is this:

When they throw the last shovelful over dirt over the corpse IMX L2, Gods Unchained won't be buried with it.

One notable thing here is that IMX L2 did not support smart contracts, which zkEVM does. So something like bulk forging could be done with a smart contract, if we completely ignore the fact that it could have also been done without it.

Similarly, a teased collaboration with Guild of Guardians (which is on zkEVM) is possible, despite the fact that it was just as possible before unless they intend to reward GOG tokens inside GU or vice versa.

_{Source: KlingAI}

How will it play out?

Here are their 'key dates':

June 2, 2025: Gods Unchained will go offline temporarily as we prepare for the migration. This downtime is necessary to maintain data integrity while assets are being processed. Our estimated downtime is 1 day.
June 3, 2025: The game will come back online. While gameplay resumes, the migration of NFT trading cards will continue in the background.
June 2–6, 2025: NFT trading cards migration window. All tradable cards will be transferred in batches, in chronological order of minting.
June 5, 2025: The $GODS ERC-20 token bridge from Immutable X to Immutable zkEVM will be open. This is a self-serve process—players will need to initiate this transfer manually. Details to come.

The long and the short of it is that they go offline on June 2, and maybe come back on June 3, although I'm going to Press X to Doubt on that one. What is the point of turning the game back on when players only have a small portion of their cards? Nobody cares if the game is down when it will be unplayable anyway for 99% of users.

It should be noted that the bridge opening date was quietly changed last night to June 5th from May 30th. (And in fact the FAQ says "Layerswap supports bridging $GODS tokens from Immutable X to Immutable zkEVM" which is 100% false, that is not an option anywhere on the site.)

So for now the good news, if any of this is good news, is you don't have to actually do anything yet.

_{Source: KlingAI}

What does this mean for Gods.Exchange?

As it stands right now, Gods.Exchange is by far the #1 IMX L2 swap, with over $1 Million USD in transactions since our founding in April 2023. For all intents and purposes this means that our site in its current incarnation is finished.

Our plan was to shut down operations in about 6 hours, we've now extended that to June 3, 23:59 GMT with the non-announcement that the bridge functionality won't be operating as planned on May 30.

But we're not rolling over, not at all. IMX currently offers a swap function on their site that allows swapping between IMX-ETH-USDC, with plans to add GODS. This uses the uniswap style model, and in fact uses the actual Uniswap Quickswap Pools.

We'll be posting our own full announcement soon with a bit of a roadmap on our Discord, but the idea is that we'll be launching our own DEX, with our own LPs. It'll be at least slightly cheaper than IMX's swap for users, with a very competitive fee structure for liquidity providers. Down the road we'll also be launching our own $GEX token to further incentivize providers. We've already had amazing support from the community on this, and should have plenty of GODS liquidity on Day One thanks to some major players in the ecosystem that we're keeping on the down low for now. We'll also be offering RavenQuest's native QUEST token, along with GOG and others as needed.

That said I had a big win here yesterday; after about 14 hours I was able to successfully deploy a couple major UniswapV2 contracts to IMX zkEVM testnet which was a massive piece of the puzzle and a fascinating challenge. If there's interest, I might go into the nuts and bolts of that in a separate post, let me know in the comments if that's something you'd like to see.

The Bottom Line

Cautiously optimistic. Gods Unchained not ded. End of an era for Gods.Exchange, but if you know me, you know I love a challenge... and this whole thing is nothing if not that.

See you on the other side!