$Gala v2: Not Just Another Airdrop
Amid Gala's new token airdrop, we take a look at what Gala is and its unique node system to understand why this might be a massive step to Web3.
10 to 100 million users will join web3 in the next two years, and Gala Games will be responsible for onboarding many of them.
The platform’s team announced today that it will be dropping a new version of its in-house token Gala on a 1:1 basis to current holders of Gala (v1).
The reason behind the Airdrop is the restructuring of smart contracts on Ethereum that the company is making to encompass all the game developments of the last two years and all the ones that are to come.
More than a technical move, this signals that their blockchain, Project Gyri, announced in February last year, might be almost ready to launch.
And as the Gala entertainment ecosystem grows, it takes Web3 with it.
Gala world
Gala Games is a start-up founded in 2019 by crypto visionaries Eric Schiermeyer, Wright Thurston, and Michael McCarthy with the ambitious goal of solving all web2 centralized gaming issues by providing a network that gives ownership over games to players.
The company’s current market cap is around $1.3 billion and some of its games, such as Spider Tank and Town Star, have become popular amongst newcomers to the decentralized Internet, proving that the team’s idea of creating“Blockchain games you’ll actually want to play,” pays off.
In 2022, it announced a juicy $5 billion investment in its ecosystem and it expanded beyond games by releasing Gala Music, putting out an exclusive DavidBowie version of Let’s Dance as an NFT, and partnering with Snoop Dog to further develop the concept of an equitable, creator-friendly decentralized music platform where fans listen-to-earn.
An entertainment platform wouldn’t be complete without movies, which is why earlier this year it announced that Gala Films was coming out, hence creating a space in Web3 for upcoming projects to gain recognition all the while movie enthusiasts watch-to-earn.
These wide steps into the future helped keep the platform warm during crypto’s winter. In January its price skyrocketed an impressive 150% while all the other cryptocurrencies were shivering cold. Aside from a bad romance with pNetwork, Gala hasn’t disappointed his users. Instead, it is giving them multiple reasons to dream on.
Gala Games
With around two billion people, 26% of the world population, playing online games, it is no surprise that they are the ones driving Web3 adoption. While the numbers speak for themselves, they don’t tell the whole truth.
The gaming industry, predicted to grow at 8.4% to be worth $321.1 billion in 2026, is a complex power web riddled with inequalities.
In an interview with e.gamers at the time of the Gala launch, Eric Schiermeyer said that when he was young the real concern was to find ways to play with other people, and now that has shifted to “people desperately trying to retain some value from the enormous amount of time and money they have spent in games.”
People spend an increasingly huge amount of time playing games contributing to the games’ developments and community and also to the gaming big businesses’ pockets by purchasing. Of all other expenses, in-game goods are a massive market, one that no official channels allow to prosper.
As such, there is a very lucrative secondary market for players to buy and sell their rewards and this is where Gala, for the benefit of players, wants to tap.
“There is a massive multi-billion dollar secondary market for items and accounts right now. But it’s a pretty seedy world right now. You’re more likely to buy an account from a hacker than you are from a real person.” Eric Schiermeyer in an interview to e.gamers
As a decentralized owned and managed information network, Blockchain has the power to change this money & power dynamics.
But this is not the only problem in the gaming industry Gala, and Web3 in general, solves.
In a PwC report about the entertainment & media industry, it was pointed out that players increasingly want to have a say in the games they play and influence fellow players’ experience. And while in Web2 centralized companies a small team of non-democratically elected people decides on future developments, the governance mechanism of decentralized platforms works in ways that every gamer is heard by the community.
More than gamers, developers benefit from current ongoing developments.
Tech giants Meta, Apple and Google destroy the survival chances of many small projects when they rip a sizeable portion of the games released through their platforms.
Also, because of controlling the means of reaching big crowds, gaming companies have the upper hand in negotiating developers’ pay. The mission state of AEGIS (Allied Employees Guild Improving Sega), the most recent Union by game developers in the United States states that “Our workers and our audience deserve games made by people who make a living wage,”.
The situation is a daring one, which is why, the community is turning to Web3, where there is no role for intermediaries. Peer-to-peer interactions allow game developers to work together, independent of gaming companies, towards the development and explore new ideas,
Gala Games has put on the white hat and come to the rodeo of change. It plans to be more than a content producer to also act as a distributor, by being a free platform where developers can make their projects known and played by wider audiences.
Gala nodes
All of this doesn’t come easy and it takes time. That is why the most impressive thing about Gala is its strategy for becoming an industry giant.
Gala, much like Stream, is a gaming platform. Yet, instead of its servers being centralized, they run on nodes that are owned by gamers.
By acquiring a Gala license anyone can start lending their computers’ power to the platform. In just six hours a day, a node can receive GALAs as a reward for helping sustain the network.
There are different types of nodes, allowing for different positions of power and influence.
1. Founders Nodes are central units in the Gala network that operate the games. The number of nodes is limited by 50,000. Since their launch, Gala has been limiting monopolization by raising the node price for every 100 nodes sold by an increasing rate — $500,$1,000, $2,500, etc. At the time of writing the node costs around 2m Gala token (~ $100,000) and pays $8 per day in Gala tokens. Annual return on investment is 3%
2. Game’s Node. These nodes are specific to games, whether it is Town Star Node, Spider Tanks Node, or any other game in Gala. Game Nodes are not limited in number but subject to selling tiers. After the end of each sales period for a tier, a new tier begins with a higher price point. The price of Game’s Nodes ranges from $3,000 to $15,000 and it can win a special NFT drop or receive a substantial discount on restricted NFTs.
3. Other Nodes. There are also Music Node and Film Nodes that's just getting started. Gala Music will provide paid music listening services with Music Node that will serve as a centralized hub for all transactions and music track storage
Nowadays Gala Games incorporates NFTs and crypto, which are managed through the Ethereum blockchain and can be sold in OpenSea but in time it plans to build its own blockchain, Project Gyri , where all games, music, and films can be hosted and the value arising from them fairly shared.
Announced in February last year ProjectGiri is supposed to be first released as a permissioned blockchain, where Gala stills have the ultimate power. Eventually, as the marketplace and community mature it will become a fully decentralized platform.
The announcement that a version two Gala is coming out in May to encompass the developments of the past two years but also future games structure, shows that progress is being made towards the development of Gala’s blockchain.
Making today’s headlines, the Airdrop is a smart marketing move but behind the eventual ups and downs that $Gala v2 will go through, it is the new world order of the gaming ecosystem led by Gala, that truly matters. An amazing story to Observe!
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