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🤔 What is Gala games ?

Gala is an ecosystem of blockchain games that include:

  • Gala blockchain: Blockchain that powers games.
  • Gala game store: Place where users can find games, like Steam.
  • Gala games: Blockchain games that run on Gala blockchain. They can be found on Gala game store.
  • Gala marketplace: Place where users can buy or sell Gala game’s NFTs.

💡 What role does Gala oken play ?

GALA is the native cryptocurrency for Gala ecosystem. It is used for:

  • Gala marketplace: All NFTs are listed in GALA tokens on Gala marketplace. Players can sell/buy NFTs from Gala marketplace using GALA tokens only.
  • Purchase node license: Nodes are responsible for running Gala blockchain. Users have to pay in GALA tokens to buy Gala node license.
  • Transaction fees: Players have to pay GALA tokens as transaction fees for including their transactions on Gala blockchain.

📝 Origin of Gala games

  • Gala games was founded by Eric Schiermeyer (the co-founder of Zynga and gaming legend), Wright Thurston (one of the first major miners in the cryptocurrency space and holder of multiple patents on blockchain technology), and Michael McCarthy (the Creative Director behind viral gaming hits such as Farmville 2) in 2019.
  • The project was funded by the founders. The project never had an ICO or raised money from any venture funds. 
  • Town star was the first game to be launched by Gala games.

👴🏻 Founders

Eric shimayer

  • He was the former CTO of intermix, media the company behind MySpace(One of the first social media platform).
  • He is also co-founder of Zynga, a publicly traded gaming company with market cap of around 7 billion dollars. Zenga is the company behind popular games like Poker, Mafia wars and Farmville.
  • He founded Gala games in 2019.
  • He is the current CEO of Gala games.

Mike mccarthy

  • He has worked for Interplay Entertainment as the Lead Animator in 1996 to 1999.
  • He joined Troika Games as the Lead Artist (1999-2003), Director of Development in Massive Black (2005-2006), and later on founded Applied Cinematics LLC (2007-2009).
  • He was former Director of Creative(2009-2015) at Zynga.
  • He is one of the cofounders of Gala games. He is the current “President of games” at Gala games.

😌 What problems does it solve ?

  • Fund games: Developers can sell NFTs that will be used in their games on Gala marketplace even before the game is launched. Developers can also code the NFTs in such a way that they get a share whenever NFT is traded giving them an evergreen passive source of income.
  • Gala marketplace:
    • Marketplace can be a common trusted platform where players can easily search and buy particular stuff for the game they are interested in.
    • Once a player is done playing a game he can get rewarded by selling all the goods that he had collected by playing the games for countless hours.
  • Composability: Developers can even develop their games to use NFTs from other games. For example, a sword collected in one game can be used in another game.
  • Swag: Gala wallet will provide a common place for gamers to see, organize and show off all their NFTs of different games in a single place.
  • True ownership: Players get to truly own what they win in Gala games. Even the game developers and Gala team cannot take away an asset earned by a player in a game(more on this later).
  • Optimized blockchain:
    • Other blockchains like Etherium needs to accommodate all use cases. Hence it optimizes for the average use case. This results in developers having to make compromises on the design and efficiency of their application (for example, requiring use of the account model in a payments platform where a UTXO model may be preferred).
    • Gala team will be migrating to Gala blockchain that is custom designed only for Gala ecosystem.

🤖How does it work ?

Gala nodes

Gala network consists of founders nodes that maintain Gala blockchain and game-specific nodes that power a specific game.

Founders nodes

  • They are responsible for verifying and adding new blocks to the Gala blockchain.
  • The nodes run proof-of-work consensus mechanism.
  • There will only be 50,000 nodes.
  • Users can run a node by buying node license from Gala games for 165.000 GALA tokens.
  • These nodes earn GALA tokens for providing their services.

Game specific nodes

  • Game-specific nodes power a specific game.
  • These nodes do not receive GALA tokens but rather the in-game token and governance rights of the specific game they are powering(rewards structure will vary from game to game).

Games

  • Gala games provide a platform to developers to develop and launch their games.
  • Each game can have unique tokenomics and reward structure. Some upcoming games are:

Townstar (Similar to Farmville)

Spider tanks

Legacy(Similar to Sims)

Last expedition(First person shooter like Dead space)

Echoes of empires(Similar to Warcraft)

Fortified(A tower defence game)

Walking Dead empires(Survival game)

Mirandas(Fancy role playing game like runescape)

Gala games marketplace

Gala marketplace is the common platform where buyers and sellers can buy/sell NFTs of all the Gala games.

🏛️ Governance model

Gala games is a centralized project. Gala team:

  • Maintains and updates Gala protocol.
  • Decide how to spend funds in Gala treasury.
  • Maintain Gala games website, marketplace and game store.
  • Nodes have to run proprietary software provided on Gala games website.
  • Gala team can block players if they are using unfair means like bots to play games.

🤑 How much money does the project have for future development ?

  • The project raised did not raise any money from ICO or venture capital. It was funded by the initial founders.
  • The project generates revenue from:
    • Selling node licenses.
    • Developing games and selling NFTs.
    • 50% of the newly mined GALA tokens go to the Gala treasury.

👍 Tailwinds

Gaming consoles are improving at an exponential rate. This has resulted in exponential growth in revenue generated by e-gaming industry.

Online gaming has surpassed traditional means of entertainment like Box office and music.

Revenue generated by gaming industry is growing at an exponential rate which will not slow down anytime soon.

Gala games has a very experienced team with decades of experience developing one of the most popular games of all time. This gives them an edge over other similar projects whose team is more blockchain-focused in capturing the market.

As a result, the quality and quantity of games being developed in Gala games ecosystem is much more than other projects.

Gala team has a sustainable revenue model that will help them to fund long-term growth of the project.

More and more players will join the ecosystem as more and more games are developed. A larger ecosystem of players will attract even more developers to develop games on Gala games platform. This positive feedback loop will result in exponential growth.

Gala wallet hacked

There seem to be several users on social media handles like Reddit and discord alleging that their Gala wallet was hacked:

  • Gala Games’ advised Paul to set up a new wallet. Credits: Paul de Klerk.
  • Gala discord server:

Gala team has downplayed the risks as users fault and did not admit any breaches on their behalf.

😨 Risks and challenges

Gala games is run by a private company incorporated in USA. There is no guarantee that the company will not face difficulties like

  • Government regulations
  • Lawsuits – for selling unregistered securities
  • Internal disputes, etc.

Moreover, the company falsely advertises that users own their NFTs. However, this not completely true. Developers of a game can always change the code to make any NFT unusable. It is technically possible but would hurt the reputation of the game.

Node operators have to run proprietary software provided by Gala team to run their node.

In terms of service, it is mentioned that Gala team has the power to terminate Node license. How is this possible if Gala ecosystem was truly decentralized network?

Moreover, Gala team has informed in several interviews that, they can detect players who are botting. And they will be banning those players. Again this would not have been possible if the project was truly decentralized.

Growth of Gala games ecosystem is not directly linked to the growth of GALA token market cap because:

  • Every game has its own token and reward structure.
  • Not much demand for GALA tokens except buying NFTs on Gala marketplace.
  • Moreover, sellers do not have any incentive to hold on to GALA tokens and not dump it on the market.

Lastly, there is already huge competition in play to earn blockchain games. Traditional gaming companies with their huge resources and talent pool will definitely jump on the opportunity if any of the blockchain gaming projects becomes wildly successful.

💰 Tokenomics

  • GALA is an ERC 20 token on Etherium blockchain(Gala team is developing their own blockchain).
  • 25 billion GALA tokens were minted in July 2020.
  • Every July, the amount of GALA minted will be cut in half, meaning there will be 12.5 billion GALA minted between July 2021 and July 2022, 6.25 billion GALA minted between July 2022 and July 2023, and so on.
  • These tokens are distributed as follows:
    • 50% goes to Gala nodes.
    • 50% of Gala treasury.
  • GALA tokens have a max supply of 50 billion tokens.

Demand pressure

Token’s price increases due to demand pressure.

Demand pressure on GALA token will come from:

  • Transaction fees: Users will acquire and pay GALA tokens to include their transactions in Gala blockchain.
  • Nodes: Users have to pay GALA tokens to buy node license.
  • Marketplace: GALA tokens are used to buy NFTs on Gala marketplace.
  • Speculators: They will acquire GALA tokens for future price appreciation.

Supply pressure

Supply pressure on a token decreases its price.

Supply pressure on GALA will come from:

  • Nodes: Nodes receive GALA tokens as reward for running and maintaining Gala blockchain. Some node operators will sell their rewards.
  • Gala treasury: They will sell GALA tokens to fund future development.
  • Sellers: Some sellers will cash out GALA tokens received from selling NFTs.

🧐 Indicators to watch out for

  • YouTube channel is growing:
  • Twitter following is growing:

👋 Final remarks

I will not be investing in GALA token because:

  • The project is not sufficiently decentralized.
  • No on-chain analytics data such as:
    • Number of players.
    • Gala marketplace volume, etc.
  • No roadmap
  • No whitepaper
  • No developer documentation
  • Not much information on their website.
  • Code is not open source.

😊 Do further research

You can continue your research by using following resources:

Further reading