The dark horse of blockchain games GUNZ is listed on Binance. Can the GameFi sector take advantage of this opportunity to make a comeback?

The uniqueness of GUNZ lies in the optionality of blockchain functions: players can choose to participate in NFT transactions to gain benefits, or simply enjoy the game itself. This design lowers the threshold for new users and attracts traditional players and Web3 users.

1. Project Background and Overview

After the GameFi industry experienced a trough, the emergence of GUNZ has rekindled the market's expectations. This is a Layer 1 public chain created by the well-known German game company Gunzilla Games, positioned as a dedicated AAA game design, and built on the Avalanche subnet. The platform is committed to seamlessly integrating high-quality gaming experience with decentralized asset ownership, giving players real ownership of game items through NFT technology, and realizing free and transparent asset transactions. Its flagship game "Off The Grid" uses a cyberpunk-style battle royale gameplay. It is currently in the early access stage and can be downloaded for free on the Epic Games Store. The uniqueness of GUNZ lies in the optionality of blockchain functions: players can choose to participate in NFT transactions to gain benefits, or simply enjoy the game itself. This design lowers the threshold for new users and attracts traditional players and Web3 users.

In addition, GUNZ uses a customized consensus mechanism to achieve 10,000 TPS per second (even 12,000 TPS in some tests) and near-zero gas fees, and provides development tools for mainstream game engines such as Unity and Unreal, greatly reducing the threshold for traditional AAA games to be put on the chain. Currently, GUNZ is in the testnet stage (Gunzscan), and the mainnet is expected to be officially launched in the second quarter of 2025.

2. Token Economy and Financing

(1) Token Parameters

Total Supply: 10 billion GUN

Initial Circulation: 6.05% (approximately 604,500,000 GUN)

Binance Launchpool Allocation: 4% (400 million GUN), used for mining rewards and liquidity support

(2) Financing

Gunzilla Games has completed two rounds of financing, totaling US$76 million:

August 9, 2022: Completed US$46 million in financing (investors include Republic Capital, Griffin Gaming Partners, Animoca Brands, Jump Crypto and Twitch co-founder Justin Kan)

March 26, 2024: Completed US$30 million in financing (led by Avalanche's Blizzard Fund and CoinFund)

This funding structure not only provides solid support for technology research and development, ecosystem construction and market promotion, but also greatly enhances investors' confidence in the long-term value-added potential of the project.

3. Technical architecture and ecological advantages

As Gunzilla Games CTO Timur Davidenko said at the developer conference: "We are not copying the game on the chain, but growing a chain in the game." When traditional 3A masterpieces still rely on DLC (downloadable content) and season tickets for profit, GUNZ has built a complete value closed loop of "player creation-transaction-governance".

High-performance public chain

Based on the Avalanche subnet, GUNZ has extremely high scalability and low transaction costs, supports 10,000 TPS (up to 12,000 TPS in some tests), and can easily cope with the high concurrency requirements of AAA games. The low gas fee design further reduces the transaction cost on the chain, providing players and developers with an excellent experience.

Engine compatibility and development support

The platform provides SDKs and white-label tools for mainstream game engines such as Unity and Unreal, helping traditional masterpieces quickly integrate blockchain functions and realize the transformation from "content consumption" to "asset co-creation". At the same time, GUNZ adopts an optional blockchain function design, allowing players to decide whether to participate in NFT transactions according to their preferences, thereby attracting more traditional players to join the ecosystem.

Strategic cooperation and community incentives

Through cooperation with platforms such as Binance Launchpool, GUNZ has gained wide market exposure and provided users with the opportunity to obtain GUN tokens for free. In addition, the project has integrated the Zealy platform, and players can receive additional token rewards by completing social, wallet and game tasks to further activate community participation.

4. "Off The Grid"-An important part of the GUNZ ecosystem

"Off The Grid" is the first application case of the GUNZ ecosystem. With its AAA-level image quality and immersive cyberpunk style, it has quickly attracted market attention. It is reported that the game has attracted more than 12 million wallets and 230 million on-chain transactions, becoming one of the most popular free games on the Epic Games Store during the early access stage.

Battle Royale Mode: The game supports 150 players to compete on the same field, and the gameplay is similar to mainstream battle royale games such as "Apex Heroes" and "PUBG". Players need to collect weapons and equipment and survive to the end in the cyberpunk open world.

PvE + PvP fusion: In addition to the traditional battle royale gameplay, the game also has narrative-driven PvE tasks. Players can complete plot tasks in the open world to affect the overall ecology of the game. After completing the task, players can get unique NFT rewards, which have collection value and trading value.

Blockchain economic system: Players can obtain NFT props (such as weapons, equipment, skins, etc.) through in-game tasks and battles. These assets truly belong to the players and can be freely traded, bought and sold on the GUNZ chain, or brought into other compatible games to achieve true asset ownership and autonomous transactions.

User experience: The blockchain function is optional. Players can decide whether to participate in NFT transactions according to their personal needs, which not only retains the traditional game experience, but also provides the possibility of asset co-creation, lowering the entry threshold for players.

V. GUNZ Market Prospects and Challenges

Potential Highlights:

Revitalizing the GameFi Sector: Although the current GameFi industry faces problems of high failure rate and low player retention rate, the market predicts that the scale of GameFi may increase to US$160 billion by 2033. With its high-quality AAA game experience and open asset ownership model, GUNZ is expected to break the shackles of traditional token incentives and become a key infrastructure to promote the recovery of the industry.

Attraction to Traditional Players: Combining top-notch graphics and optional on-chain functions, GUNZ can meet the needs of hardcore gamers and traditional players at the same time and expand the user base.

Funding and Strategic Support: The $76 million financing and the strong endorsement of Binance Launchpool provide the project with sufficient marketing and liquidity support, enhancing its long-term development potential.

Challenges:

Community and Player Concerns: There have been a large number of project failures, player loss and community doubts in the GameFi field in history. GUNZ must improve user stickiness and trust by continuously launching high-quality content and efficient user services.

Market volatility and regulatory risks: The volatility of the overall crypto market and the changing regulatory policies of various countries may have uncertain effects on the value of tokens and project development.

Token unlocking risk: If the subsequent token unlocking arrangements are not transparent or the release speed is too fast, it may trigger market selling pressure and have an adverse impact on short-term prices.

VI. How to participate and obtain GUN tokens

Users can participate in GUN token mining through the Binance Launchpool platform:

Supported assets: BNB, FDUSD, USDC

Reward ratio: 80%, 10%, 10% respectively, and the upper limit of individual rewards per hour is 444,444, 55,555, and 55,555 GUN respectively

Activity time: 08:00 on March 28, 2025 (Eastern Time Zone 8) to 08:00 on March 31, 2025 (Eastern Time Zone 8)

Listing time: 21:00 on March 31, 2025 (Eastern Time Zone 8), trading pairs include GUN/USDT, GUN/BNB, GUN/FDUSD and GUN/TRY

Although the Binance airdrop has ended, the project has provided task rewards through the Zealy platform. You can get additional GUN tokens by completing social, wallet and game access tasks.

VII. Conclusion

The GUNZ project has great potential to revitalize the GameFi sector with its AAA-level game quality, innovative asset ownership mechanism, and strong financial and market support. Through the high-quality game "Off The Grid", GUNZ is expected to not only attract traditional and Web3 players, but also build a decentralized, player-driven healthy game ecosystem, opening up a new situation for the blockchain game industry.

However, the project still faces multiple challenges such as community concerns, market volatility, regulatory uncertainty, and token unlocking risks. Investors should pay close attention to user data, content update progress, and token unlocking arrangements after the project's mainnet is launched, reasonably allocate risks, and remain sensitive to the overall dynamics of the industry. Overall, if GUNZ can effectively respond to the above challenges, it has significant value-added potential in the medium and long term as a key infrastructure to promote the recovery of GameFi, and it deserves continued attention and moderate participation.