The developers of HYCHAIN, an Ethereum-based gaming L2 Rollup, have announced that the mainnet is now officially live ahead of the upcoming beta version of voxel-based platform HYTOPIA, formerly known as NFT Worlds.

What Is HYCHAIN?

HYCHAIN is a gaming-focused L2 on Ethereum powered by $TOPIA and Arbitrum. It’s designed to support widespread adoption of large Web3 games by providing zero gas fees, user-friendly onboarding through self-custodied accounts accessible via social login options, developer-friendly API and more.

It initially already had a live mainnet as a Polygon Edge-based L2, but Polygon notified them in December last year that there will no longer be support for Edge technology, requiring developers to maintain the tech on their own if they wish to continue using it. After careful consideration, the developers determined that this would pose many challenges the more the chain grew without official support, so they decided to move on towards Arbitrum’s L2/L3 solutions. This shift to Arbitrum was announced in January this year, where it was revealed that they will use Nitro/AnyTrust technology to power the chain, bringing many improvements over the Edge version such as faster block times, all helping to provide a better on-chain gaming experience. The transition also opened up the gaming chain to partner games, with the testnet going live in the same month.

Earlier this month, a sale for Node Keys took place, which are NFTs needed for operating Guardian Nodes through which owners can earn rewards. The more Node Keys used to run your Guardian Node software, the higher share of rewards you can earn from assertion challenges that you automatically participate in. Around 7 million $TOPIA tokens are to be distributed every month, with a total of 250 million tokens planned to be distributed as Guardian Node rewards over the course of 3 years.

At the time of writing, around 380 Node Keys are still up for grabs for the price of around 0.201136 $ETH per key.

When Is HYTOPIA Launching in Beta?

HYTOPIA, a free-to-play voxel-based gaming platform through which players will be able to use tools to create their own experiences, is set to go live in an invite-only beta at the end of Q1 2024. Beta pre-registration kicked off last year, and you still might have time to sign up on the official website where you can reserve your username and potentially receive an exclusive launch lootbox during the beta phase.