GALA Up 11% On Announcement of New Token

Next month, the metaverse-centered Gala Games is heading for a major upgrade. With the deployment of the new token version, will Gala’s metaverse influence overshadow the likes of Decentraland and Sandbox?

GALA (v2) Reborn

Following the Fed’s interest rate hiking cycle and the FTX crash, the metaverse talking points have largely died down. However, that just means developers are hard at making Web3-based metaverse a reality. One of them is Gala Games.

On Tuesday, Gala developers announced the launch of $GALA(v2) on May 15th. Being Ethereum-centric, the updated Gala (GALA) tokens will bring multiple changes to the ERC-20 smart contract. The most significant tweak is the enhanced token-burning mechanism.

In January, Gala Games foreshadowed it with the pay-by-burn program, enabling users to burn GALA tokens when they trade on the Gala platform. Therefore, 100% of GALA tokens will be eliminated from circulation when they buy metaverse assets. However, new ones are minted and redistributed in place of destroyed tokens via Gala’s Founders Node.

More than anything, this mechanism was introduced to make the ecosystem more transparent. The new GALA v2 tokens will also be more secure and modular, making future upgrades easier to implement.

GALA v2 Drop Incoming

Present GALA tokenholders will have their assets replaced with the new tokens in a direct 1:1 token drop on May 15th, after which the old $GALA (v1) will become defunct. As we’ve seen with LUNA to LUNC drop, this is accomplished by contrasting asset snapshots.

For this reason, Gala developers urge all GALA tokenholders to unstake their tokens from any liquidity pools and other smart contracts so that the snapshot can be clear.

Barring that preemptive measure, GALA tokenholders don’t have to do anything to get their assets replaced with the new version. Needless to say, everyone is eligible for a 1:1 replacement.

Gala Games’ Blockchain Projects

Founded in January 2018, the San Francisco-based Gala Games has had relatively modest funding, at $5 million alongside its Blockchain Gaming Fund, which raised $100 million as of December 2021.

Gala’s founder is none other than Eric Schiermeyer, the co-founder of the prolific Zynga, having specialized in mobile games such as Farmville. With a legacy background like that, Gala Games attracted much speculative attention.

However, since GALA’s all-time-high price of $0.83 in November 2021, the token is down by -94%. This is not surprising, as the Fed’s asset ballooning and subsequent asset suppression had this effect on most altcoins. Nonetheless, GALA far outperformed Bitcoin, year-to-date.

Out of a total 50 billion max supply, only 6.98 billion are in circulation, at $335.8 million market cap. Image credit: Trading View

To no one’s surprise, the fate of GALA tokens relies on the success of Gala Games. Or, in the short run, how their announcements are received. So far, the Gala platform has 16 games on offer in various stages of development, covering a wide range of genres—including survival MMORPGs like The Walking Dead: Empires.

As these blockchain games are rolled out, the Gala Game Platform facilitates ownership of all in-game assets acquired or earned via GALA tokens. This contrasts with traditional account-based games like Fortnite, in which bought in-game assets are forever locked and untradeable.

Aside from the upcoming May GALA token upgrade, Gala Games has high ambitions. This includes launching its proprietary chain – Project GYRI, i.e., Gala’s chain. This roadmap follows the footsteps of Dapper Labs of CryptoKitties fame, who launched their Flow blockchain for the enterprise-grade NFT marketplace.

Gala’s chain is bound to spur the value of GALA tokens even further, as it attracts the developer side of the blockchain gaming equation. But for that to happen, Gala Games’ offering will have to grow in popularity on their merit.

Which Gala Games game do you like the most? Let us know in the comments below.