Gala (GALA) is a utility token built on the Ethereum blockchain that can be used in the Gala Games ecosystem, a play-to-earn platform, as a means of payment. As such, GALA can be used to buy non-fungible tokens (NFT) in the Gala Shop as well as control the network or win prizes.

GALA’s price skyrocketed in November 2021, from $0.086 on Nov. 11 to $0.8248 on Nov. 26, which is the coin’s all-time high to date. At the time, its market capitalization was close to $5 billion.

The maximum supply of GALA tokens is 35.24 billion GALA. Currently, there are 6.98 billion GALA tokens in circulation.

GALA’s market value is still very low compared with its main competitors, Axie Infinity’s AXS and The Sandbox’s SAND token. As of April 2022, the all-time high AXS market cap was $9.8 billion (based on a price of $164.90) while the highest market cap for SAND was $7.5 billion (based on a price of $8.40).

The GALA token was issued in November 2020 and saw a bullish year in 2021 before falling to as low as $0.1653 on Jan. 24, 2022.

Gala differs from other gaming ecosystems because it gives control of game development to its players by allowing them to submit their game ideas for a vote by the community. This way, gamers have full ownership of their in-game items, such as their NFTs.

So far, Gala Games has released one game, Town Star, and an NFT series called Vox.

In Town Star, each player manages and owns a town, and so far over 700,000 towns have been created, with roughly 600 million players having played the game as of April 2022. Vox, on the other hand, is a set of unique NFT avatars that can be used for multiple purposes, like earning voxcoins.

Gala Games was founded in July 2019 by Eric Schiermeyer, co-founder of Zynga, the social and mobile games company that launched video games Poker and Farmville. As of April 2022, Gala Games has over 1.3 million monthly active users and has sold roughly 26,000 NFTs, with the most expensive one worth over $3 million.

In December 2021, Gala Games announced that, with investment firm C2 Ventures, it had formed a $100 million fund to invest in play-to-earn games, the metaverse and other blockchain-based projects. Global gaming revenue is expected to reach $200 billion in 2024, according to e-sports analytics firm Newzoo.