Coin Bureau: Analyzing the Current Development and Future of Gala GAMES
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Coin Bureau: Analyzing the Current Development and Future of Gala GAMES
Gala Games' mission is broadly to become the largest gaming ecosystem in cryptocurrency and disrupt its centralized competitors.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsNote: This is TechFlow's text transcription of Coin Bureau's YouTube video to make it easier and faster for readers to access the content. We encourage our audience to approach the material with rationality.
A new era in gaming has begun. Many are wondering which games will succeed and which will ultimately fail over time. Among all play-to-earn projects, Gala Games stands out as one of the few ecosystems that has withstood the test of time.
Today, I’ll explain what Gala Games is, how it works, and why the GALA token could become one of the largest play-to-earn cryptocurrencies.
History of Gala Games
Gala Games was founded by Eric Schiermeyer and Michael McCarthy.
Eric is the former CEO of Intermix Media, the company behind MySpace. He is also a co-founder of Zynga, a publicly traded gaming company currently valued at around $7 billion.
Michael was formerly the Creative Director at Zynga, where he created FarmVille, the famous Facebook game.
Eric has been researching cryptocurrency since 2014. Inspired by Axie Infinity’s play-to-earn model pioneered in 2018, he established Blockchain Game Partners in January 2019—a U.S.-based for-profit company that develops and operates Gala Games.
Eric currently serves as CEO of Gala Games, while Michael holds the title of President of Gaming—an impressive job title, I must say.
While Eric and Michael have been actively engaging with the community, Jason Brink has served as the public face of Gala Games as its Chief Marketing Officer.
Jason previously worked at the United Nations. His primary motivation for joining GALA is the potential of play-to-earn gaming to lift people in developing countries out of poverty.
He has also witnessed corruption within international organizations and hopes that crypto protocols can eventually replace them—I stand with you on that, man.
As for Eric and Michael, they’ve stated they “have a vendetta against centralized game companies and big tech.” In a group interview in March, both explained that free-to-play models force game developers to spend up to $20 per user, leading them to prioritize profits over game quality.
Cryptocurrency, especially play-to-earn, makes it possible to create profitable free games while giving users greater control through NFTs and on-chain governance. This allows developers to focus on quality and scale—exactly why Eric and Michael founded Gala Games.
What Is Gala Games?
Gala Games aims to become the largest gaming ecosystem in crypto and break away from its centralized competitors. Unlike other crypto projects, Gala Games did not receive any VC funding nor conduct an ICO for the GALA token. For more information on GALA’s tokenomics, see below.
Gala Games received initial funding from its founders and currently generates revenue by selling NFTs for its blockchain games. All tokens and NFTs associated with these games are currently on Ethereum but will eventually migrate to the upcoming GALA Chain sidechain—I’ll return to this shortly.
The only fully launched Gala game so far is Townstar, a farming game similar to FarmVille. Townstar actually has its own TOWN token, earned through gameplay, which can be used to purchase Townstar NFTs in the Gala Games NFT store or marketplace.
Spider Tanks is currently the only other Gala game available, though still in testing phase and playable in early access—it reportedly gained traction in South Korea.
The only thing left to implement is Spider Tanks’ own play-to-earn mechanism, expected to be finalized later this year or early next year. Beyond Townstar and Spider Tanks, Gala Games is currently developing Legacy (a Sims-like game), Last Expedition (a first-person shooter akin to Dead Space), Echoes of Empires (similar to StarCraft), Fortified (a tower defense game), The Walking Dead: Empires (a recently announced survival game), and Mirandus (a fantasy MMORPG similar to RuneScape).
According to Gala Games’ website, its live games have over 1.3 million monthly active users. Over 26,000 NFTs have been sold, with the most expensive reportedly fetching $3 million.
Strangely, there appears to be no active player tracker, and trading volume for Gala Games NFTs is not visible on any dApp or NFT tracking site. This may relate to the fact that most activity on Gala Games is apparently handled by independent GALA nodes.
How Does Gala Games Work?
Although it's unclear what GALA nodes currently do, in the future they will power the GALA Chain sidechain. Documentation about the GALA Chain sidechain hasn't been released yet, so details like transactions per second remain unknown. What we do know is that GALA Chain will support 50,000 GALA nodes, which Jason Brink believes will scale to accommodate 100 million monthly active users.
Currently, there are approximately 23,000 nodes, known as Founder Nodes. Only 50,000 "Founder Nodes" will ever exist. To become a Founder Node, you need to purchase a Founder Node license for about 16,000 GALA—worth roughly $8,000 at current prices. I believe this GALA goes directly to Gala Games.
Founder Nodes earn GALA tokens, NFTs, and tokens from current and future Gala Games, along with other unannounced benefits and prizes. They also govern the ecosystem primarily by voting on which new games should be added to Gala Games and must stay online for at least six hours per day. Clearly, the longer they stay online, the more rewards they earn. According to a recent video by YouTuber Sorensen Family, current rewards for running a Founder Node amount to about 150 GALA per day—or roughly 50,000 GALA annually—plus other Gala Games tokens. Not bad at all.
To my knowledge, once the GALA Chain sidechain launches, two additional node types will be introduced. These are Paid Nodes, which will operate infrastructure for specific games, and Free Nodes, which support either Founder or Paid Nodes and receive a share of their rewards.
Most remarkably, the GALA Chain sidechain will actually feature three consensus mechanisms. Founder Nodes will run proof-of-work computations, Paid Nodes will provide proof-of-stake security, and Free Nodes will offer proof-of-storage—all ensuring the entire Gala Games ecosystem remains decentralized.
Moreover, the GALA Chain will automatically adjust token rewards based on ecosystem needs—if better computation is required, Founder Nodes get more tokens; if more security is needed, Paid Nodes receive more; if improved storage is necessary, Free Nodes are rewarded accordingly.
This sounds very similar to THORChain’s incentive pendulum—you can learn more about that project via the link below. But before doing so, let’s take a look at GALA’s tokenomics.
GALA Tokenomics
In terms of token design, GALA is an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain and also exists as a BEP-20 token on Binance Smart Chain.
GALA is currently used to purchase Gala Games NFTs and Founder Node licenses. In the future, GALA may also be used to pay transaction fees on the GALA Chain.
The total supply of GALA is quoted at approximately 50 billion, raising questions about whether the token has a maximum cap. Information on Gala Games’ tokenomics page is also vague, forcing me to piece together the full picture using secondary sources.
From what I’ve gathered, the first batch of GALA tokens was minted in July 2020. During the first year—from then until July 2021—25 billion GALA were minted.
Every July, the amount of newly minted GALA is halved—meaning 12.5 billion GALA were minted between July 2021 and July 2022, 6.25 billion between July 2022 and July 2023, and so on.
Additionally, 50% of newly minted GALA goes to the Gala Games Conservatorship, which appears to function as a community treasury supporting the development of new Gala Games.
Interestingly, Founder Nodes must pay ETH gas fees to open loot boxes and claim GALA tokens and other rewards—indicating that GALA is being minted from scratch and continues to be minted incrementally.
In other words, GALA likely functions as a cryptocurrency similar to Bitcoin’s BTC. This idea is supported by data on Etherscan, which currently lists a maximum supply of 36.3 billion GALA.
Oddly, this doesn’t align with Gala Games’ stated emission schedule (as detailed on their tokenomics page). Furthermore, circulating supply figures for GALA on CoinMarketCap or CoinGecko vary significantly, and the smart contract does not clearly state the total supply—this is concerning. It suggests the actual circulating supply might be 36.3 billion, giving Gala Games a massive market cap of nearly $20 billion. That would require enormous capital to drive up the price of the GALA token.
GALA Price Analysis
Since trading began in summer 2020, GALA has surged over 500x, with most of those gains occurring in 2021. The first major spike happened in September, triggered by Binance’s announcement that GALA would be listed.
Gala Games (GALA) rallied 265% shortly after Binance announced the listing.
Gala Games also released a trailer for Spider Tanks, which received positive feedback.
The second surge occurred in November, following Coinbase’s announcement that it would list GALA. Gala Games also revealed utility for its recently launched VOX NFTs—link to that blog post below if interested.
The third surge was somewhat anomalous, occurring during an apparent downtrend for GALA. This rise was driven by announcements made at the Galaverse conference in Las Vegas.
The largest announcement was likely the formation of a $100 million blockchain gaming and metaverse fund with C2 Ventures, a crypto venture firm closely tied to Huobi Exchange.
Assuming the current market cap is accurate, GALA still has significant room to grow compared to other cryptocurrencies in this niche. Axie Infinity is currently the market leader—if GALA catches up to AXS while AXS’s market cap remains unchanged, GALA’s valuation would be double that of AXS.
Unfortunately for GALA, the supply side of the economic equation appears skewed. Millions of GALA are minted weekly to reward Founder Nodes, and I suspect many of these are being sold.
Eric Schiermeyer also revealed in a March presentation that 2 billion GALA had already been allocated to the Gala Game Fund, likely adding further selling pressure. And let’s not forget the recently announced $100 million fund, which could involve sales of GALA tokens.
Meanwhile, the only real drivers of demand for GALA are NFTs on the Gala Games marketplace—whose trading volume is unverifiable—and Founder Node licenses, which are too expensive for most people. Still, GALA’s fundamentals are stronger than Decentraland’s. If MANA briefly surpassed AXS in market cap, I believe GALA could do the same. Learn more about Decentraland via the link below.
Roadmap
Like all crypto projects, GALA’s long-term potential ultimately depends on Gala Games’ roadmap. The closest thing Gala Games has to a roadmap is a recent blog post titled “Node Map.”
The first paragraph states: “We don’t publish roadmaps, whitepapers, or specific development timelines”—which is extremely frustrating, as even the next sentence admits.
Interestingly, the first milestone mentioned is that Gala Games may eliminate Paid and Free Nodes. Instead, it will introduce game-specific nodes—the first of which was announced on the same day as the Node Map.
The Node Map notes: “These nodes’ potential rewards will be limited to specific games. They will never receive GALA or enjoy the benefits and privileges of operating Founder Nodes.” It also explains that game-specific nodes will only govern their respective games, with few exceptions. The last point isn’t entirely clear, but I interpret it as Founder Nodes receiving a portion of the GALA paid by game-specific nodes for their licenses.
I should clarify that Gala Games explicitly states everything here is subject to change, citing “very large updates to the node program and ecosystem coming in the near future.”
Among other milestones mentioned in founder interviews, the most significant may be the launch of Mirandus, expected by the end of next year.
Gala Games also appears to have plans for collaborations with Polygon and Flare Network. The partnership with Polygon will involve creating a new blockchain game, and Gala Games will leverage Ethereum’s leading Layer-2 solution to reduce gas fees—though details and timelines remain unclear.
The collaboration with Flare Network is particularly interesting, as Flare is essentially XRP’s smart contract sidechain. Gala Games has provided semi-regular updates on its Flare partnership, with the latest noting that GALA will be mintable on Flare, and Flare will add support for the GALA token upon completion of its Ethereum bridge.
Concerns
My concerns about Gala Games mostly revolve around communication and transparency. First, Gala Games lacks formal documentation. Most critical project information is only available on its support page, which is not easily accessible. Even when found, the support page is neither user-friendly nor detailed, and where it is detailed, it becomes overly complex—especially regarding node reward calculations.
I also find the absence of a forum slightly frustrating. I know they use Discord as their primary discussion platform, but having a dedicated space to organize ideas and project proposals would greatly improve visibility into the project.
As previously mentioned, Gala Games has neither a whitepaper nor a roadmap—while I somewhat understand the reasoning, I still believe this makes it difficult to assess the project’s potential. However, one convenient side effect is that it keeps opportunistic investors away and increases the likelihood that GALA holders are in it for the games, not just returns. That said, I’m still unclear on what Founder Nodes currently do. The system requirements for hosting a GALA node are surprisingly low—so low, in fact, that they couldn’t possibly support high-performance gaming infrastructure.
I’m also uneasy that the software used to run Founder Nodes is owned and operated by the company behind Gala Games. This wouldn’t be an issue if not for the clause stating: “If for any other reason GALA determines that the user is violating any of the above license terms, GALA may suspend or terminate the user’s access and immediately cease use of the platform services without notice.” In other words, if you breach the license agreement, Gala Games can revoke your right to run a node—legally speaking, that’s what this clause means. This ties back to co-founder Michael McCarthy’s comment in a March group interview, where he said they can detect and ban players using bots in their games. This is particularly concerning, but it does raise important questions about content moderation in decentralized environments—a topic worthy of its own video. Finally, I want to emphasize that what impresses me most about Gala Games is its ecosystem approach and the unmatched experience of its founders. If it can adequately address its shortcomings while leveraging its greatest strengths, Gala Games could easily become one of the top cryptocurrency projects in blockchain gaming.
Video Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5qKk9_cpvE
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