Social Network Rep is Taking GalaChain Beyond Gaming

Gala Video games’ newly inaugurated proprietary blockchain GalaChain has ambitions past the gaming house—with the launch of social media platform Rep showcasing the potential of the decentralized protocol.

“Individuals take a look at us as a metaverse or gaming undertaking primarily,” Gala’s President of Blockchain Jason Brink informed Decrypt. “However the actuality is that all the gaming content material is the ‘window dressing’ for what is going on on behind the scenes—which is the creation of a large decentralized protocol that something may be constructed on.”

Earlier this month Web3 gaming platform Gala Video games took the numerous step of migrating from the Ethereum community to its proprietary blockchain, GalaChain. On GalaChain, players now not have to fret about Ethereum gasoline charges when utilizing NFT recreation gadgets, aligning with Gala Video games’ user-first ethos. In addition to underpinning well-liked video games similar to Dragon Strike and Spider Tanks, this transfer additionally factors in direction of Gala’s future as a wider blockchain platform.

Introducing Rep

Rep, the primary exterior software to be constructed on GalaChain, hopes to navigate the present mire of social media networks, providing a decentralized house for customers to work together, talk and play collectively, on their very own phrases. “There actually has by no means been a greater time to have a brand new social media community than proper now,” Brink argues.

Rep permits customers to publish short-form messages like Twitter, Bluesky and Threads, and long-form articles like Medium. Its secret sauce is its deep integration of geolocation options, which permits customers to create Treasure Hunts in real-life places (suppose Pokémon Go). Treasure chests may be stuffed with something the customers need; from loot bins to NFTs or passwords to extra content material. And they are often posted as simply as a tweet. “The principle differentiating think about how we’re approaching this social platform within the first place is gamification,” Rep CEO Neil Haran informed Decrypt.

Though it’s a social community at the beginning, Rep was born out of the gaming sphere; Haran can be chief govt of open-world sandbox recreation Rawbots and was constructing the platform out earlier than collaborating with Gala Video games to host it on GalaChain.

For some time now, Gala Video games customers have been eagerly anticipating a group aspect to their video games. One of many first social networks throughout the Rep ecosystem might be Gala Pals, the place they’ll invite associates to come back and play with them, share their accomplishments and scale the affect of their gaming expertise.

The primary model of Rep is ready to go dwell by year-end and might be built-in throughout the entire Gala ecosystem.

The UX Problem

An important aspect of Gala Video games and Rep’s partnership is their mutual understanding of the significance of interesting to informal customers. Because the Gala Video games web site reads: “We consider the blockchain must be invisible in our video games.”

“The issue lies in that the person expertise is totally damaged and we have not made it a precedence to repair these issues. And not directly, we find yourself alienating folks,” argued Haran, “So we’re using Web3 in a approach that the person expertise is tremendous easy.”

Whereas Rep V1 will function messaging and geolocation purposes, future variations have a eager eye on person personalisation. Suppose again to the heyday of MySpace; Haran envisages modular widgets, the place customers can add the performance they need, reflecting how they select to make use of social media. “This places the person base in command of rising the performance of the appliance,” Brink added.

Sport, Collectively

Rep’s IRL treasure hunt function raises the potential for related in-game quests. Each Brink and Haran enthused in regards to the chance; if Gala Video games customers can seek for Treasure chests in the actual world, why not in-game, throughout video games? That approach, players may be launched to new play serendipitously, bringing again a component of intrigue and discovery to the playscape whereas including worth throughout Gala’s rising line-up of video games. Cross-game interoperability, mentioned Haran, would “let gamers naturally, organically, study all these different video games.”

The prospect turns into much more thrilling when utilized throughout Gala’s different branches; GalaMusic and GalaFilm. Customers may unlock reductions for dwell occasions or streamed experiences with Rep’s treasure hunt function, or uncover new locations, artists and other people through their gaming group. “It is easy. It is pure. It is natural. And that is the imaginative and prescient; this social community brings the whole ecosystem collectively,” says Haran.

The way forward for GalaChain and the Gala Node Ecosystem

As the principle requirement for the deployment of a social community system is the storage of person info, Rep can be using Gala’s node ecosystem framework to deploy their very own node system, which is able to make the most of processing, bandwidth, and storage property supplied by the group of node operators which have bought licenses, which can be found on the Gala Video games web site.

With Rep as a proof-of-function, the way forward for GalaChain and the Gala Node Ecosystem gives up thrilling potentialities for industries past gaming. “Our essential focus is constructing one thing that’s highly effective sufficient to deal with the mass inflow of customers that’s horizontally scalable to deal with no matter is required,” mentioned Brink, “When you clear up for that, you may deal with anything—it is an excellent basis to construct on for the long run.”