Author: Zen, PANews

On the evening of March 31, the GUN token, linked to the popular battle royale game "Off the Grid," officially launched. As the core asset of the GUNZ blockchain developed by its creator Gunzilla Games, the GUN token sparked a frenzy during the Binance Launchpool event, attracting over 1.7 million participants and a total staking amount of up to $15.8 billion, setting a new high in nearly seven months.

This phenomenon not only reignited the market's call for the revival of blockchain games but also made GUN one of the most notable new tokens recently. After its official launch, GUN rose to $0.115 but began to decline after reaching its peak. According to CoinGecko data, as of April 1 at 6 PM, its token price was approximately $0.076.

"Off the Grid" Mainnet Launch Still Not Scheduled

Alongside the GUN token, the GUNZ mainnet has quietly gone live. However, the official announcement regarding the mainnet launch has not been heavily promoted, with the official X account primarily sharing content related to the GUN token. When opening the GUNZ Main Explorer, it appears to be a "ghost chain" with seemingly low activity. This may be why the official team has not given much exposure to the mainnet—the flagship game "Off the Grid" has yet to officially launch on the GUNZ mainnet.

Currently, players of "Off the Grid" 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 created on the GUNZ testnet, with a total transaction volume of 490 million, and a daily transaction volume of 2.5 million, mostly ranging between 2 million and 3 million transactions.

Additionally, the daily active user count for "Off the Grid" is around 500,000. Although this is significantly lower than the peak of 900,000 reached at the game's initial release, it is still quite remarkable given the generally sluggish state of the blockchain gaming industry. The initial hype was largely due to the game developer Gunzilla inviting a group of well-known game streamers, led by Ninja, to promote "Off the Grid."

As for the specific timeline for the official mainnet launch of "Off the Grid," no detailed information has been disclosed yet. According to crypto media Decrypt, on March 31, Theodore Agranat, the Web3 director of Gunzilla Games, informed players in the GUNZ Discord server that "we will now begin the process of migrating the game to the mainnet," but did not specify an expected timeline for the migration.

Furthermore, in an interview with gaming media GamesBeat, Agranat stated that currently only 20% of "Off the Grid" is in a live state, and it is merely an early version. "We are very satisfied with our current performance in terms of onboarding, which has allowed our user base to grow steadily. With each update, our retention and conversion rates improve," Agranat added.

Is GUN the "Super VC Coin"?

Gunzilla Games has publicly completed two rounds of financing, raising a total of $76 million, with investors including Republic Capital, Griffin Gaming Partners, Animoca Brands, Jump Crypto, Avalanche's Blizzard Fund, and CoinFund among other well-known institutions.

In the previous cycle, such star projects favored by VCs were easily embraced by the public, but now they are often labeled as "VC coins" by the community. The native token GUN of the L1 blockchain GUNZ is currently facing such scrutiny. Especially since its initial circulating supply is only 6.05%, with a fully diluted valuation (FDV) exceeding $740 million, it falls into the typical category of "high market cap, low circulation."

According to the official white paper, the total supply of GUN tokens is fixed at 10 billion, distributed as follows:

• Private Sale Round (37.8%): 3.78 billion GUN sold to GUNZ partners through SAFT agreements from 2021 to 2024, divided into four pools:

1. Private Sale A Round: 1.25 billion GUN (12.5%)
2. Private Sale B Round: 2 billion GUN (20%)
3. Strategic Round: 500 million GUN (5%)
4. KOL Round: 300 million GUN (0.3%) — allocated to top Web3 KOLs supporting the project

• Funding (13%): 1.3 billion GUN for ecosystem development, partnerships, infrastructure development, and unforeseen operational needs
• Community Incentives (4%): 400 million GUN allocated to early adopters, active community members, and promotional activities for the TGE (Token Generation Event)
• Liquidity Pool (3%): 300 million GUN to maintain liquidity for centralized and decentralized exchanges, ensuring smooth trading
• NFT Validator Staking (5.1%): 510.5 million GUN locked in validator NFTs, used to mint in-game assets over time, reducing circulating supply
• GUNZ Foundation (9%): 900 million GUN allocated to the GUNZ Foundation for funding ecosystem expansion, governance, and infrastructure development
• Founders and Team (12.8%): 1.2805 billion GUN reserved for the founding team and core contributors, incentivized for long-term success based on vesting schedules
• Advisors (5.29%): 529 million GUN distributed to the technical advisory team conducting blockchain R&D to enhance the GUNZ ecosystem
• Platform Rewards (10%): 1 billion GUN for incentivizing gameplay, competitions, and in-game economic activities, ensuring a player-driven economy

According to this tokenomics, the number of GUN tokens held by VCs and the project team will exceed 50%, with the private sale proportion being the highest among recently launched projects on Binance. Additionally, according to the GUNZ project report released by Binance on March 31, 2% of the total GUN supply (i.e., 200 million tokens) has been allocated for liquidity/market making. The report also specifically noted: "Tokens have not yet been distributed to market makers, and additional address information will be provided later."

However, on-chain analyst @ai_9684xtpa detected that a suspected GUN market maker address underwent a large-scale transfer at 3 AM on March 31, totaling 191 million tokens. Moreover, from April 1 at midnight to 8 AM, the token continued to execute high-frequency small sell orders, averaging about 10 transactions per second, with each transaction amounting to approximately $6, equating to about $216,000 worth of tokens sold per hour. The analyst later added that this situation might also be due to a large participant in the Launchpool setting up a bot to automatically sell tokens. According to calculations, if this large participant triggered the BNB reward pool cap and mined for 3 days, they could indeed receive the corresponding 32 million tokens.

What Utility Does $GUN Have Without Airdropping to Players?

"We launched a game, and mainstream players commented that they only play Off the Grid. Therefore, we believe the right approach is to develop enough games to launch on Binance, the world's leading exchange with 250 million users," Theodore Agranat stated, believing they have launched the largest Web3 game project ever, as well as the largest Web3 AAA game ecosystem.

Whether the scale of Web3 games is indeed the largest may still be up for debate, but GUNZ's incentive model for players is undoubtedly the most unique—players did not receive token airdrop rewards. With the official launch of the $GUN token, Gunzilla will destroy the testnet tokens, but items such as weapons and prosthetics minted by players will be migrated from the testnet to the mainnet, allowing players to eventually withdraw items from the game and sell them on OpenSea.

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 from the in-game marketplace, paying for custom items, and consumables. In the future, Gunzilla plans to add other games and projects to the ecosystem, and the utility of the GUNZ ecosystem and its tokens may correspondingly increase.

"Our goal is to provide the best, most immersive, and engaging gaming experience." Agranat stated that their true aim is to entertain players and not to try to change anyone. "What we are trying to do is to say, 'This is better. We are creating something. This is how you own assets.' Now, if you want to learn how to set up a wallet, truly own your assets, and self-custody, you can. Even if the service shuts down, you can keep it, and then you can sell it on OpenSea. But it is still about how we provide the best gaming experience, and we use Web3 tools to give players a better experience."

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