Competition in blockchain gaming – What is Gala Games

Gala Games was launched in 2020 as a gaming studio. Its founders and developers have set themselves the goal of giving gamers the opportunity to “really” own the items in their computer games. They also want gamers to vote for the inclusion of new games on the platform and participate in the further development of existing games. Thus, the “largest decentralized gaming network” is to be created.

What is Gala?

GALA is the company’s play-to-earn cryptocurrency. The associated platform was programmed on the ETH blockchain and represents a kind of sandbox for game developers. In the ecosystem, everyone can present their own gaming idea. The GALA nodes then vote on which of the proposals should receive financial support and be allowed to be further developed on the platform. Gala Games currently counts nine games one of which – “Townstar” (more on that below) – is already live.

The following applies to Gala: Not all nodes are the same. On the one hand there are the game-specific nodes (more on that later) and on the other hand the so-called Founder Nodes. Of these, there are currently – and at most – 50,000 pieces. You could buy this status by purchasing a license for 165,000 GALA. In order to receive rewards in the form of tokens and NFTs for its participation in a proof-of-work consensus mechanism, the nodes must be active for at least six hours a day. According to the website, to compensate for the CO₂ emitted as a result, Gala Games supports the project “One Tree Planted“.

Last year, the network consisted of two more paid and free nodes. However, these now seem switched off to have become In addition, the Gala Games company still reserves the right to revoke the node license in the event of misconduct.

GALA Tokonomics

Depending on the source, the information regarding the maximum amount of GALA tokens differs – the information ranges from 37 to 50 billion. In any case, they agree that the current circulation amount is around 7 billion tokens. The tokens are used for this

1. participate in polls,
2. Rewarding the nodes and
3. making P2P payments.

In addition, players of the Gala Games can use the tokens on their own NFT Marketplace buy unique items. In addition to GALA, ETH, BAT and TOWN also serve as means of payment in this market. The items can then be used to improve your own game performance.

Townstar: Farming simulator with NFTs?

This principle applies to the gala game Townstar, for example. In this farming simulator, people buy trucks or barns as NFTs to farm their own digital land more efficiently and quickly. You receive Townstar Tokens (TOWN) for your services, which in turn can be used to buy NFTs.

The game has had its own nodes since November, which again required their own license. At the sale that took place in November, a According to the blog post all licenses sold out within five minutes. In the second round of allocation in January, the starting price for a TOWN license was the equivalent of 14,000 US dollars. For this it said:

The current number of existing Town Star Nodes is determined by the number of players participating in the Town Star Play-to-Earn. Each time a new set of licenses is released, the price either increases or stays the same.

Town Star Nodes – Round 2 coming soon!, January 8th

Abnormalities

The special thing about GALA is that there was never an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) for the initial value determination, similar to BTC. Also, the company did not initially take any money from venture capital companies to build the network. It can therefore be assumed that the value of the tokens is mainly made up of what players are willing to pay online for the items.

It is also striking that there are no roadmaps, white papers or similar to be able to understand the current development status. A blog post says:

We recognize that this makes us different and some find it frustrating, but we will always work to build what is best for the entire ecosystem.

The Nodemap: Node Ecosystem Growth and Development, November 15, 2021

The reason given is that the development of “software and ecosystem is full of change”, which is why one does not want to commit to clear statements. Coin Bureau supposed means that GALA tokens should be used for games and not for gains. This could be a disadvantage in the race for the market capitalization crown in the blockchain gaming space, because play-to-earn and profit-oriented projects are more likely to attract investors’ money than a gaming project that is primarily about the games go.