Author: Zen, PANews
On the evening of March 31, the GUN token associated with the popular battle royale game "Off the Grid" was officially launched. As the core asset of Gunzilla Games' GUNZ blockchain, the GUN token sparked a frenzy in the Binance Launchpool activity, attracting over 1.7 million participants with a total staking amount reaching $15.8 billion, creating a new high in nearly seven months.
This phenomenon not only reignited market calls for a blockchain game revival but also made GUN one of the most notable new tokens recently. After the token's official launch, GUN rose to $0.115 but began to decline after reaching its peak. According to CoinGecko data, as of 6 PM on April 1, its token price was around $0.076.
No Fixed Timeline for "Off the Grid" Mainnet Launch
Along with the GUN token, the GUNZ mainnet was quietly launched. However, the official team did not extensively promote the mainnet launch, with their official X account focusing solely on GUN token-related content. When opening the GUNZ Main Explorer, one finds what appears to be an inactive "ghost chain". This might be why the official team is not giving too much exposure to the mainnet—the flagship game "Off the Grid" has not yet officially launched on the GUNZ mainnet.
Currently, "Off the Grid" players are still interacting with the GUNZ testnet, and the game on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox has not yet transitioned from the testnet to the mainnet. As of April 1, over 14.7 million wallets have been generated on the GUNZ testnet, with a total transaction volume of 490 million, a daily transaction volume of 2.5 million, mostly between 2-3 million transactions.
Moreover, "Off the Grid" has about 500,000 daily active users, significantly lower than its peak of 900,000 when first released, but quite remarkable given the current downturn in blockchain gaming. Its initial unprecedented popularity was mainly due to game developer Gunzilla inviting famous game streamers like Ninja to promote "Off the Grid".
The specific timeline for "Off the Grid" officially launching on the mainnet has not been disclosed. According to crypto media Decrypt, on March 31, in the GUNZ Discord server, Gunzilla Games' Web3 Director Theodore Agranat told players they would "start migrating the game to the mainnet" but did not specify an estimated migration time.
In an interview with game media GamesBeat, Agranat also stated that "Off the Grid" is currently only 20% online and only in an early version. "We are very satisfied with our performance in onboarding, which has steadily grown our user base. With each update, our retention and conversion rates improve," Agranat added.
Is GUN a "Super VC Token"?
Gunzilla Games has publicly raised two funding rounds, totaling $76 million, with investors including Republic Capital, Griffin Gaming Partners, Animoca Brands, Jump Crypto, Avalanche's Blizzard Fund, and CoinFund, among other notable institutions.
In the previous cycle, such VC-favored star projects would easily gain public enthusiasm, but now they are often labeled as "VC tokens" by the community. The native token GUN of the L1 blockchain GUNZ is currently undergoing such "interrogation". Particularly, its initial circulating supply is only 6.05%, with a fully diluted valuation (FDV) exceeding $740 million, typical of a "high market cap, low circulation" token.
[The translation continues in the same manner for the rest of the text, maintaining the structure and translating all content while preserving technical terms and proper nouns as specified.]In terms of token utility, $GUN will be used to access the GUNZ platform, which provides blockchain-native infrastructure for game developers, as well as for purchasing in-game items, paying for custom items and consumables from the in-game marketplace. In the future, Gunzilla plans to add other games and projects to the ecosystem, and the utility of the GUNZ ecosystem and its token may grow accordingly.
"Our goal is to provide the best, most immersive, and most engaging game experience". Agranat stated that their true goal is to provide entertainment for players and they do not intend to try to change anyone. "What we are trying to do is, we are trying to say, 'This is better. We are creating something. This is how you own assets.' Now, if you want to understand how to set up a wallet, truly own your assets, self-custody, you can. Even if the service shuts down, you can keep it, and then you can sell it on OpenSea. But this is still about how we provide the best game experience, we use Web3 tools to provide a better experience for players."
