Illuvium

What is Illuvium (ILV)?

Illuvium is an open-world fantasy game on Ethereum, often touted as the first AAA game on the blockchain. Thanks to built-in collecting and trading mechanics, Illuvium is designed to appeal to both casual gamers and DeFi connoisseurs.

Currently in private beta, Illuvium falls under the autobattler, creature collector, and open-world exploration genres. It centers around the player’s crew, which crash-lands in a wilderness with seven alien landscapes to explore and mysteries to uncover—including that of the cataclysmic events that shattered Illuvium.

Graphically rich and powered by Ethereum, Illuvium lets players discover, hunt, and capture the deadly beasts that rule the game’s alien world. There are over a hundred of these creatures, called Illuvials, and players can train and fuse them into powerful evolutions. While making use of hybrid synergies and unique abilities, players are challenged with forging the perfect team of Illuvials. Beyond enjoying a graphical masterpiece and a story-rich experience, players can earn the ILV cryptocurrency as in-game rewards. This can come by completing PvE quests, earning achievements, and winning tournament and event prizes. They can also sell and trade Illuvials and other in-game NFT items with the benefit of zero gas fees thanks to Illuvium’s integration with Immutable X.

Who are the Founders of Illuvium?

Illuvium was founded by Kieran and Aaron Warwick, siblings of Synthetix founder Kain Warwick.

Kieran Warwick was exposed to Bitcoin and Ethereum early on and worked with his brother Kain in e-commerce. Kieran also had a stint at Blueshyft, and while there, he successfully onboarded major Australian exchanges and started the world’s first OTC crypto exchange.

As DeFi began to boom, Kieran tapped his brother Aaron to build what they hoped would be Ethereum’s first AAA title. Aaron Warwick is a Computer Engineering and Physics graduate of the University of Wollongong and is the chief game designer and story supervisor at Illuvium.

Kain Warwick is an investor in Illuvium, as are Aave founder Stani Kulechov, 1inch DEX founder Anton Bukov, Quantstamp CEO Richard Ma, and BarnBridge founder Tyler Ward. Illuvium is backed by several VC firms, including IOSG Ventures, LD Capital, Stake Capital, BlockSync, and Bitscale.

How Does Illuvium Work?

Illuvium casts players as survivors of a space fleet that discovers a magical world filled with beasts that can harness immense power. These beasts are called Illuvials, and players aim to capture and control them as they explore the world.

These Illuvials can work together thanks to various synergies, and players deploy their Illuvials in team-based battles and Arenas. The player’s Illuvials get stronger and stronger, and once they reach their threshold level, they can be fused into even more powerful creatures.

Along with levels gained from experience, Illuvials have an affinity for different world elements, such as water, fire, earth, air, and nature. Players must consider these affinities when fusing their Illuvials into stronger forms and also keep in mind which affinities are deployed in combat since they have strengths and weaknesses against other affinities.

On top of that, Illuvials are also grouped into classes, including Fighter, Guardian, Rogue, Psion, and Empath. Again, these classes must be considered when synergizing teams and fusing Illuvials.

In a welcome change from many other blockchain-based games, Illuvium has no barrier to entry in the form of an initial investment or expense. Players can start playing for free, with access to a weaker set of starting Illuvials.

A large part of the game’s appeal comes from exploring the world and capturing Illuvials, but more PvP-oriented players can face off in Battle Arenas. Other players can spectate and even wager on the outcomes.

Illuvials and other in-game items that can be mined and forged may also be sold by players on IlluviDEX, the Illuvium exchange. This online marketplace is governed by the Illuvium DAO and allows players to trade all game NFTs without gas fees.

What makes Illuvium Unique?

Blockchain gaming is an emerging industry, and while still in its infancy, it attracts a lot of criticism. Private equity-owned gaming publications are never shy about attacking blockchain games or NFTs, and arguably, some of the criticism is warranted.

However, Illuvium changes the game. Where most blockchain games are criticized for being low-effort pixel productions, Illuvium offers a staggering experience built on Unreal Engine 5. Each region is crafted by some of the world’s best digital artists. The game includes extremely high-quality cinematics that work smoothly even on weaker computers, thanks to deterministic simulation.

Other established blockchain games, such as Axie Infinity, require an initial investment. In a bull market with NFTs costing hundreds of dollars, this can be a major barrier to entry for gamers who aren’t expecting to pay more than $59.99 for an AAA title.

Illuvium acknowledges this problem and gives players the resources they need to start playing for free. That way, players don’t need to risk any capital and can decide to purchase in-game NFTs later.

Even better, Illuvium has chosen Immutable X as an Ethereum scaling solution. While there are plenty of successful scaling projects on the market, Immutable X specializes in gaming and provides exactly what gamers need—zero gas fees when trading NFTs on IlluviDEX, the safety and security of main layer Ethereum, and instant transactions with massive scaling potential.

Finally, Illuvium also includes significant DeFi elements. This is to bootstrap the development of the game, letting ILV holders stake their tokens to access a liquidity mining program.

The program’s purpose is to distribute ILV from the Illuvium Treasury to community members, thereby spreading the tokens around and incentivizing more participation. In addition, it makes Illuvium a decentralized protocol, with the staking of ILV being a doorway into the governance of the platform as well as regular distributions.

How is the Illuvium Network Secured?

Illuvium is a game based on Ethereum that uses the Immutable X scaling solution. Therefore, it relies purely on Ethereum for security and consensus since Immutable X uses zero-knowledge proofs that allow it to benefit from Ethereum’s security.

The Illuvium backend, meanwhile, is hosted on infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service provider Amazon Web Services. While one of the few, or only centralized, cogs in the Illuvium wheel, AWS does provide best-in-class service.

What is the Use of ILV?

ILV is an ERC-20 token staked to receive a share of vault distributions. This comes via a share of in-game purchases and fees, with 100% of revenue from the game and sales to be shared between ILV stakers. This heavily democratizes the project, given that ILV is also used in governance.

ILV holders collaborate on game improvement proposals and carry out elections for the initial model of government, the Illuvinati Council. Members of this governing council serve for a defined amount of time and receive a stipend in ILV tokens.

How Much ILV is In Circulation?

Illuvium has a maximum supply of just 10 million ILV, with around 2 million ILV currently in circulation.

In December 2020, Illuvium carried out a pre-seed sale of 500,000 ILV for $1. The following seed sale in January 2021 saw the price of ILV triple, with 1.5 million ILV sold. The Illuvium team was also allocated 1.5 million ILV tokens, as was the project treasury.

How Do You Buy ILV?

You can buy ILV tokens from the official Illuvium liquidity pool on Sushi. Then, you can connect to the staking interface in just a few clicks and start playing an active role in platform governance.

If you’d rather use a centralized exchange, ILV is already widely listed. However, you won’t be able to take advantage of ILV distributions or play a part in governance if you hold ILV on an exchange.

How Do You Store ILV?

ILV is an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency, so it’s extremely easy to store. There are plenty of easy-to-use Ethereum wallets, including browser extensions like Metamask and Immutable X partner GameStop’s Ethereum hot wallet. Hardware options like Ledger and Trezor are also great options for storing your ILV safely.

Is ILV a Good Investment?

Investing in any cryptocurrency carries inherent risk, but buying the ILV token gives retail investors a chance to benefit from the Illuvium platform’s success. Given that the ILV token enables the funneling of revenues from the game directly to holders, the token could be a valuable passive income instrument well into the future.

However, such attractive tokenomics also come with elevated interest from regulators. The ILV token challenges the status quo regarding governance and distribution, and if it comes under the regulatory microscope, the future could be unclear.

Whatever happens on that front, Illuvium itself remains an extremely attractive project and a vehicle with which blockchain gaming can finally break the NFT and blockchain stigma that the mainstream media have tried so hard to build.