Immutable Unveils Passport, Offering Seamless Web3 Onboarding for Gamers and Developers

ImmutableX, a platform for building and scaling web3 games on Ethereum, today announces Immutable Passport, a simple and secure onboarding solution designed for game studios.

Immutable Passport is a wallet and authentication tool that streamlines onboarding for gamers through passwordless sign-on and automated wallet creation. Passport offers a noncustodial solution that never holds the user's private keys nor is involved in signing transactions. Through Passport, game studios can drive adoption across mainstream audiences, maintain enterprise-grade security, and access meaningful player analytics. Players get access to a secure digital wallet, protection against fraud, and seamless authentication across web3 games and marketplaces. Immutable Passport also helps gamers create and secure their unique online identities that can travel across web3 alongside them.

Customer research conducted by the ImmutableX team found that ease of onboarding, security, and plug & play features were the top priorities for development studios integrating web3 components into their game. Achieving these goals requires a mainstream gamer-friendly wallet to possess a simple sign-in process, leveraging social logins from popular services like Google and Apple. This allows gaming projects to easily welcome new, larger audiences.

The Immutable Passport delivers enterprise-grade security, ensuring that only the holder of the corresponding private key can gain access — allowing gamers to remain protected and controlling their assets.

Passport provides a noncustodial wallet solution and never takes custody of private keys. It also offers seamless signing to enable a better player experience while ensuring transaction signing can only be initiated by the end user via their device. Additionally, the sign-up process is passwordless, reducing the risk of hacked accounts and forgotten passwords — gamers simply enter a one-time password sent to their email.

Immutable Passport will also allow game studios and developers to tap into critical information, including insights into customer behavior and players' needs and wants. Moreover, any studio that integrates with Passport will get access to a large group of active players in the ImmutableX ecosystem. Additionally, partners will gain instant access to a robust web3 ecosystem of tools, APIs, and infrastructure solutions that enable global scalability.

“For web3 gaming to reach a billion players, onboarding must be invisible, secure, and work across any game – mobile, console or desktop. Until now, security, and friction have been tradeoffs. Passport is a self-custodial wallet, where users can sign in with just an email and one – time password – it will be a game changer for players and radically reduce user acquisition costs,” said Immutable President and Co-Founder Robbie Ferguson. “More than that, just like a Gamertag or a Steam account, Immutable Passport offers unified identity, transaction, and authentication functionalities that simply haven't existed in the web3 gaming space until now. We can't wait to introduce our partners to the power of Immutable Passport.”

Immutable exclusives Guild of Guardians and Gods Unchained will be among the first games to integrate Immutable Passport at launch, and they've already begun implementing Passport as their wallet and authentication solution.

While web3 gaming continues gaining traction worldwide, many mainstream players, especially those unfamiliar with decentralized tech, face numerous roadblocks to adoption. Having to store multiple seed phrases while interacting with different centralized platforms — all of which can also impose their own hefty fees — makes jumping into a web3 game harder than it should be for most players. 

As a result, it could be difficult for users to be transaction-ready when they need it. To have funds loaded on a wallet ready to use, they must go through centralized exchanges or use on-ramps, which requires players to exit the gaming experience. These processes lack adequate status messaging, confuse users, and leave them concerned about where their funds are.

Additionally, most crypto wallets are designed for use in decentralized finance (DeFi) and don't account for web3 gaming-specific needs — making them awkward for players to use. However, if designed with gamers in mind, wallet use can enhance gameplay rather than interrupt it.

To alleviate these issues, Immutable Passport was designed from the ground up to accommodate gamers and developers alike — offering an all-in-one gaming-centric wallet that avoids the problem of fragmentation and doesn't require web3 expertise to use.

Apart from enabling easy migration of ImmutableX-compatible in-game assets, Immutable Passport also offers numerous player-friendly features to make web3 onboarding as easy and seamless as possible, such as gamer profiles, early access to game features, user-set limits, and more. Thanks to a built-in security framework that Immutable plans to launch post-launch, dubbed “Guardian,” users will be able to access all the required tools to ensure that their profile and digital assets are safe, with features including 2FA approvals, a child lock system, and even private key recovery, should a user lose their keys.

Further, Immutable Passport will also grant players and developers unified access to the whole Immutable ecosystem, including all marketplaces, tools, and more. Immutable Passport is scheduled to launch in April 2023, but game studios and developers can begin the integration process now.