Gala Games – Fundamental Research Report (Investing in Gala Token)

The Crypto industry is yet prepping for another exciting year, and Crypto Gaming is one of the most bullish sectors.

This is our second research report on a Gaming Project. Before this, we published a report on The Sandbox, which made our community more than 10x in a span of a few weeks. You can read The Sandbox Research Report here.

Moving on, gaming as an industry has evolved substantially over the last 20 years. Initially, it was just a “Mode of Entertainment”, then it grew as a medium to “Escape from Reality”, but now it is “The Reality”.

Not kidding, several people have started quitting their day jobs to play crypto games. Thanks to the Play to Earn games which rewards its players in real crypto tokens. Just google it, or read this article as a reference. Axie Infinity pioneered this P2E (Play to Earn) category of games.

Further, the main spice behind the growth of these projects is the Blockchain ecosystem which gives complete control of in-game assets to the players with the help of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).

Today we have brought another P2E gaming platform called Gala Games.

So, let’s dive in and understand more about the project.

What is Gala Games?

Gala Games is a Gaming Studio that builds blockchain-based games. Currently, the platform is built on the Ethereum Blockchain. However, the company plans to shift the platform to its native blockchain network called Gala network.

This project’s USP (Unique Selling Point) is the founding team’s substantial experience in the gaming ecosystem. Further, unlike a single game, which can become popular at a point but loses its charm over time, Gala Games is a gaming studio that will build several games. This means that the ecosystem is not dependent on one single game.

Now let’s take a look at founders and their respective backgrounds.

Who are the Founders of Gala Games?

The founders of Gala Games are Eric Schiermeyer and Michael McCarthy.

Eric Schiermeyer – Linkedin
CEO, Gala Games

Eric lives in San Francisco, California, in the United States and has completed a degree in Philosophy from the University of California. In 2000, Eric Co-Founded Intermix Media, the company behind MySpace, one of the most popular social media platforms of the early 2000s before Facebook.

In 2007 Eric Co-Founded Zynga, a gaming company that built some of Facebook’s most popular games, such as Farmville and Zynga Poker.

With so much success in the gaming space, in July 2019, Eric joined hands with an Ex Creative Director of Zynga Michael McCarthy and founded Gala Games.

Michael McCarthy – Linkedin
Studio Director and Co-Founder, Gala Games

Michael puts up in Salem, Oregon, in the United States. He has done his Bachelors in Fine Arts and Computer Animation.

Michael has served as a Creative Director with many gaming companies. From 2009 to 2015, he worked at Zynga.

After leaving Zynga in 2015, he joined Eric in 2019 to build Gala Games. In Gala Games, Michael is a Studio Director and the lead developer of the platform’s first game Town Star, a crypto version of Farmville.

In addition to the founders, the team strength of the project is more than 90.

Now let’s understand more about Gala Games through its various components.

Components of Gala

1.      Network Nodes

As discussed before, Gala Games plans to operate its gaming ecosystem through its blockchain network called Gala Blockchain. The transfer of Gala on its blockchain is expected to happen somewhere in Q2 of 2022.

Further, this Network is divided into two parts:

1. The Gala Blockchain – built with Founder Nodes
2. The Gala Game Node Network – built with Game Nodes.

Let’s understand these nodes one at a time.

a.    Founder Nodes – Gala Blockchain

A node is a computer system that needs to download Gala Games software. There will be a maximum of 50,000 founder nodes on the network. These founder nodes will create a blockchain network known as the Gala blockchain. This is how the whole ecosystem will be secured and will remain decentralized.

Thus, the founder nodes would have a shared authority on the Gala network.

Founder nodes will be rewarded periodically in the form of GALA tokens (the native tokens of the GALA ecosystem) and limited edition NFTs.

However, to run a founder node on the network, you need to purchase a founder node license on the platform.

At the time of writing, the price of one Gala Node License is 287,263 Gala Tokens, i.e., approximately $ 92,500. That’s quite expensive.

Once complete 50,000 node licenses are issued, there is a plan to convert these node licenses into a Non-Fungible Token so that they can be traded in the marketplaces.

You can read more about Gala Founder Nodes here.

b.    Game Nodes – Gala Game Node Network

Game Nodes are similar to the Founder Nodes with the difference that they are game-specific nodes. These nodes create a secondary network to the main Gala network called Gala Game Node Network.

Currently, there is one live game on the platform called Townstar. So, Townstar has its own Game Node Network. Hence, people can purchase a Townstar Node as well.

The last ask price of a Townstar Node was 46,085 GALA Tokens (the native token of Gala Games ecosystem) which is approximately $15,000.

You can read more about the Gala TownStar Nodes Here. Further, you can read more about the Gala’s Node Network ecosystem here.

2.      Gala Games

The most important component of the whole Gala Games project is the Games that they are building. Let take a look at them.

Townstar

Townstar is the first P2E (Play to Earn) game to go live at Gala Games. It is a crypto version of Facebook’s most popular game Farmville. You are allotted a farm with some cash, and you need to build it like a business and sustain it with the available resources. It is a very challenging game.

Further, Michael McCarthy, the co-founder, is the lead developer of this game. I played Townstar for a good few hours. Except for the game loading time and latency, it is a very addictive game.

You can earn a native token $TOWN by completing daily challenges. Further, top players of the day can win additional prizes. However, to earn these rewards, you need to have some GALA tokens (the native token of the Gala Games ecosystem) and a Townstar NFT in your wallet.

You can read more about Townstar here. Further, each game on Gala Games has a separate NFT Market, you can refer to Townstar NFT Marketplace here.

Some other games that are under development on the platform are:

The Walking Dead: Empires
It is a game based on the famous zombie comic series The Walking Dead.

Read more about The Walking Dead here.

Mirandus
It is a game where you decide who you will be and choose your quest in the epic fight against evil.

Read more about Mirandus here.

Legacy
Legacy is a game about growing and developing your own business through the power of creativity.

Read more about Legacy here.

Echoes of Empire
It is a sci-fi mystery game.

Read more about Echoes of Empire here.

3.      Gala Store

The next component of Gala Games is the Gala Store. It is an NFT marketplace for in-game items to be used on the Gala Games ecosystem.

The marketplace is segregated with items that can be used on different games.

Currently, four types of crypto tokens can be used to purchase these NFTs:

1. GALA
2. Ethereum
3. BAT
4. The native token of the game (Such as TOWN token can be used to buy Townstar NFTs)

The highest sale made on this marketplace was a Castle in the Mirandus game, sold for approximately $3 Million. In total, more than 26,000 NFTs have been sold.

4.      GALA Token

The next component is GALA, the native token of the Gala Games Ecosystem.

GALA is a utility token that has the following use cases:

1. Governance of Gala Games
2. Rewards to the Founder Nodes
3. In-game currency of Gala Games Ecosystem:
4. Rewards to the Game Players
5. Payment for in-games items on Gala Store

Note that GALA token holders do not have equity rights in the Gala Games Ecosystem. Further, holding this token does not make you entitled to any share in revenue or profits of the organization.

You can read more about the GALA Token here.

Token Economy

We could not find information related to GALA tokens’ current distribution and future emission.

Further, based on On-chain analysis of GALA tokens, 91% of token holders hold more than 1% of the token supply, which means that supply is not very decentralized.

Therefore, due to lack of information and high concentration of tokens, tokenomics is inconclusive.

You can read more about GALA Tokenomics here.

Where to buy Gala token from?

You can purchase GALA tokens from these Centralised and Decentralised Exchanges:

Now let’s understand the pros and cons of the Gala Games.

Benefits and Limitations of Gala Games

What are the Benefits of Gala Games?

The benefits of the Gala Games are as follows:

1. Gaming Community

The most important thing a game needs is Players. You can have the best graphics, developers, team, and investors. But if you don’t have players, it will not work.

The biggest strength of Gala Games is the community of gamers. With just one game live, the platform has 1.3 Million active users, which is pretty impressive.

• Better Ecosystem than Axie Infinity

The P2E pioneer Axie Infinity is just a single game that is very popular at the moment. There is a possibility that people might get bored of the game. This means that the whole ecosystem is dependent on one single game.

However, Gala Games is a gaming studio that is not dependent on one single game, and the success of each game would contribute to the value of Gala Games and thus GALA Token

• Social Media Presence

The social media presence of the Gala Games is significant.

• Twitter – More than 270K
• Facebook – More than 34K likes
• Youtube – More than 18k subscribers

What are the Limitations of Gala Games?

The limitations of the Gala Games is as follows:

1. No Whitepaper and No Roadmap

This was the most shocking part for us. Practically, we have not seen any blockchain project that doesn’t have any whitepaper. In addition to this, the project has no roadmap to identify when is the game development planned to be completed.

This makes it very difficult for us to determine how the project would grow and when the under-development projects are expected to be up and running.

• Less Transparency

Even without the whitepaper, we tried to figure out the ecosystem with the help of available resources.

It was challenging for us to join all the pieces together as researchers. This is because the website and other resources do not have efficient documentation essential for a growing blockchain project.

• Game Latency

Although Townstar is a very interactive game, sometimes we found latency. Similar issues were reported on Gala’s discord channel a few times.

• No Mobile Application

For mass adoption of a particular game, it has to have a mobile application. Currently, there is no foreseeable plan to launch a mobile application by the company.

• Token Utility and Tokenomics

The use cases of GALA tokens are limited and non-exclusive. For example, the in-game tokens can either be purchased in the GALA tokens or three other tokens. This reduces the utility and need of GALA tokens in the ecosystem.

Further, there is no sufficient information to understand GALA tokens’ current distribution and future emission.

Conclusion: Should You Invest In Gala?

So, that is all we could find about Gala Games and its native token, GALA.

In our opinion, the project has many benefits and some limitations. However, the benefits are more than its limitations. Ultimately, what a gaming project needs is adoption through players, and that Gala Games definitely has.

Therefore, in our understanding, the project has a potential upside in the coming quarters when a few other games will be up and running. Please note that we already hold a decent bag of GALA tokens in our portfolio.

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