Coin Healthcheck: Gala Games (GALA)

About

GALA coin is the main utility token of the Gala Games blockchain gaming platform that aims to redefine both the gaming industry and blockchain as a whole.

Gala Games gives players full ownership of their in-game assets, allows NFT holdings, and enables players to contribute to the governance of its ecosystem.

Co-created by a former founder of Zynga in 2019, Gala Games has over 1.8 million monthly active users. Initially built on the Ethereum network, Gala Games separated its ecosystem from the Ethereum blockchain in 2021.

The blockchain gaming platform also oversees the group of creative technologists, Gala Labs, which is behind collectible NFTs and animated 3D avatars ‘VOX.’

State of the Project

The platform is secured by users who operate Gala Nodes and receive rewards for contributing to the network. The platform currently has over 24,000 active nodes out of a maximum of 50,000 nodes.

The node ecosystem relies on Proof-of-Work (PoS), Proof-of-Stake (PoS) and Proof-of-Storage protocols.

All games are free-to-play and accessible through decentralized applications (dApps).

GALA is the ERC-20 utility token used to pay for digital goods, NFTs, and other in-game items within Gala Games ecosystem. GALA is also used to reward node operators.

The Ethereum-based gaming platform bridged to the Binance Smart Chain in August 2021.

Whitepaper:

No separate document available for the whitepaper.

Product, tokenomics, node operations, and rewards are all explained in the support articles of the official website.

Fundraising:

GALA token was launched in 2020 without an Initial Coin Offering (ICO).

The only way to obtain the token was by running a founders node, or by playing the project’s games.

Development stage:

The Gala Games platform currently offers 5 games to its users: Mirandus, Town Star, Echoes of Empire, Spider Tanks, and Fortified.

Has a bridge with the Binance Smart Chain, and a partnership with the Polygon blockchain.

In its final preparations to release the Game Node license Gala Games will give users responsibility for Town Star’s growth, and the ability to earn rewards for doing so.

Roadmap:

Open presale for two new games in the Gala Games ecosystem (December 9th).

Platform security upgrades to be done by January 3rd, 2022.

Team

Founded by Eric Schiermeyer, the co-founder of Zynga mobile games, Wright Thurston, who holds multiple patents on blockchain technology and was one of the first major crypto miners, and Michael McCarthy, previously creative director for FarmVille 2.

Gala Games has a team of 89 employees at the time of publishing.

Partnerships:

Partnership with 888 The New World, a digital art marketplace.

Invested into Concept Art House, a well-known gaming art production company which has contributed to over 1000 popular games including Call of Duty Mobile, Fortnite, League of Legends, ROBLOX, PUBG and more.

Community:

Social media accounts: Twitter (179.5K), Discord (106.7K) Facebook (34K), Youtube (13.3K).

Has loyal and active Gala Games supporter communities.

Big crypto influencers, such as Ryan Selkis, David Gokhstein, WendyO, are among the projects followers.

Key metrics:

Max supply: 50 billion

Circulating supply: 6.98 billion

Market Cap: $3.3 billion

Token distribution & allocation:

17,123,286 GALA is distributed daily. 50% of this goes to node operators, while the other 50% goes into the development of the Gala Games ecosystem.

Gala Games halves the distribution amount every July.

There are over 62K holders on the Ethereum network, and 28K wallets on the Binance Smart Chain.

91% of wallet addresses hold more than 1% of the circulating supply.

Exchange listings:

Listed on 65 cryptocurrency exchanges (full list available here), including Binance, Coinbase, KuCoin, Huobi and Crypto.com.

Wallets:

GALA is compatible with MetaMask, Trust Wallet, Binance Chain Wallet.

Price action:

All-time high (ATH): $0.821 (November 2021)

All-time low (ATL): $0.0001347 (December 2020)

GALA sits at just under 40% below its ATH at the time of publishing.

Verdict:

The Gala Games project has solid fundamentals. Extending the ecosystems of its games and growing their user bases, while also growing its experienced team and forming solid partnerships are all on track to giving Gala Games the best chance to succeed in the long run.
The gaming industry itself is expected to grow by approximately 12% by 2024. Naturally this could also play into GALA coin’s future price growth.
Tough competition in the field of blockchain-based play-to-earn games, and high gas fees, represent the biggest roadblocks to Gala Games’ future growth. However, Gala Games’ bridge with the Binance Smart Chain, and its partnership with Polygon, have expanded its ecosystem outside of Ethereum, essentially eliminating the risks provided by high network fees.
GALA is a mid-market cap cryptocurrency with a limited max supply, and is listed on the largest cryptocurrency exchanges. It is currently in the middle of a growth curve and has room to rise further. However, the circulating supply of the GALA token is low, meaning that such price growth may take time.