Flagship Blockchain Project From Square Enix Moves Minting Of NFTs To Arbitrium

After launching the inaugural character NFTs on Ethereum mainnet, video game giant Square Enix has shifted to layer-two Arbitrium to mint the 1500 characters of the second chapter of Symbiogenesis.

Eva Senzaj Pauram

Jun 04, 2024 - 2 min read

The narrative-driven Symbiogenesis game has opened its second chapter with the minting on Arbitrium of 1500 non-fungible tokens representing unique game characters.

Collectibles from the chapter one characters of Square Enix's first Web3 project were launched on Ethereum's mainnet. To lower users' transaction costs, the company has now opted to mint the latest NFT batch on one of the L1 blockchain's scaling solutions.

The new characters were minted during a three-day public auction from May 31 to June 2. Most of the digital assets were sold under 1 ETH, while the most expensive collectible, a female persona called 'Figure,' cost its owner 1.34ETH (around $5,033).

In the last decade, the Japanese gaming giant has built a reputation in the traditional video game industry with blockbuster franchises such as Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Tomb Raider, and Kingdom Hearts.

However, last year, the corporation underwent considerable layoffs and recently reported $140 million in losses largely due to canceled games. Nevertheless, in the fiscal year ending March 2024, it still boasted $2.3 billion in net sales and a market share of $3.82 billion.

Symbiogenesis, launched in the Spring of 2023, is the first of its projects primarily using blockchain technology. Two months ago, they entered a partnership with Animoca Brands to bring the game to a global audience using Aminoca's expertise and its soon-to-be-launched NFT launchpad.

The game is centered around resource monopolization and distribution and forces players to choose between sharing or withholding information while competing to find treasures that grant them access to the following stages.

Ten thousand NFTs will be minted in total, each representing a unique character in the story. In chapter one, 500 unique characters were created on Ethereum, and the treasures hunted by players as the story developed could be minted on the Polygon network.

Square Enix is not alone in moving its project away from mainnet Ethereum. Several other projects have recently decided to relocate activities from the blockchain and other layer-one protocols to one of Ethereum's layer-two protocols.

The trend had intensified since March, when the Dencun upgrade on the network led to a drastic reduction in the transaction fees of the blockchain's scaling solutions. In May, the decentralized gaming project Wolf.Game also announced it was moving from Ethereum to L2 Blast.

Symbiogenesis's team has yet to reveal whether the in-game assets collected by players in the game's next phase will also migrate to Arbitrium or stay in Polygon.