Gala

Gala Games is a play-to-earn game development company building a robust gaming ecosystem that leverages the power of blockchain technology to empower its users. The project exists on both Ethereum and the Binance Smart Chain, but plans to migrate to its own native blockchain in the future. Players are able to truly own their in-game items in the form of NFT’s which can be traded on secondary markets.

Gala Games was created by Eric Schiermeyer and Michael McCarthy in 2019 who intended to develop a gaming ecosystem that gave its users full ownership and control over their in-game assets. Eric was previously the CRO of Intermix Media which was the company behind MySpace as well as the co-founder of Zynga, which is a seven billion dollar company created in 2007 in an effort to “connect the world through games.” Michael was once the creative director at Zynga where he developed Farmville 2, a popular game on Facebook. The two saw an opportunity with play-to-earn games that allowed developers to truly focus on game quality while remaining profitable and giving control to the users.

Since its inception, Gala Games has put decentralization at the top of their priority which led the team to decide against any type of early distribution such as an initial coin offering or presale to allow for an organic release of the tokens through their node network. To accomplish this, their first course of action was to grow the gaming network through the sale of Founder’s Nodes which make up the core of Gala Games’ ecosystem. These nodes are rewarded with Gala tokens, NFT’s, and governance power.

Currently, Gala is focused on the development of their own proprietary blockchain, GalaChain, as well as the acquisition of partnerships and successful game studios. GalaChain will drastically reduce network fees and allow for increased scalability that is unavailable on Ethereum. Gala has made great strides building relationships with the likes of Frank Miller, Under Armour, and AMC’s The Walking Dead with many others on the way. Gala Games wants to upend the free-to-play model that caught on with Fortnite where gamers essentially leased in-game items from the developer.

The Gala token is used to power the in-game economy across all the different games available in the ecosystem as well as incentivizing node operators for supporting and facilitating the network. Players can make in-game purchases with the token or trade peer-to-peer. For instance, in Gala’s first game, Town Star, the top players are rewarded in GALA. The token is also used to purchase Founder’s Nodes.

The current state of the Gala ecosystem resides on the Ethereum blockchain. Founder’s Nodes are the foundation of the network and can be purchased directly from Gala Games. Founder’s Nodes are responsible for giving players real ownership of their assets and content. In return, these nodes will earn GALA, NFT’s, and governance power. GALA received by Founder’s Nodes is stored in a treasure chest and the node operators are responsible for paying the gas fees necessary to mint those tokens to the blockchain. This feature was implemented to increase decentralization. The only technical details about Founder’s Nodes is that they will implement a “see-saw” algorithm to determine if the network needs processing power or storage, allowing for on-the-fly adaptation.

In the future these nodes will power a new native blockchain to solve transaction fees and scalability called GalaChain. GALA will likely be used to pay network fees on this new blockchain. Once the licenses to all 50,000 Founder’s Nodes have been sold, Gala will begin sales of game specific nodes which will create a localized network for each game released through Gala to support scalability as more and more games are introduced to the ecosystem. In Town Star, for example, a game specific node would allow a player to run their town without leaving a browser window open. The rewards for these nodes will be limited to the specific game that they are supporting, which means they will never receive GALA or any of the bonuses available to Founder’s Nodes. Game specific nodes may even allow for developers to hold a vote on potential changes to their game. Game specific nodes are absolutely necessary for the ecosystem to scale since Founder’s Nodes alone would not be capable of supporting thousands of games.