Gravity: The Infrastructure Engine Behind Web3's Next Phase
Gravity: The Infrastructure Engine Behind Web3's Next Phase
This week we discuss our investment into Gravity ($G) – a next-gen Layer 1 from the team behind Galxe, marking the latest evolution of our multi-year relationship with one of web3’s most scaled, adopted, and quietly foundational ecosystems.
The Next Chapter in a Long-Term Bet on Galxe
For us, this investment was more than just conviction in a promising new token. It’s the result of a multi-year relationship with the team behind it — a team we’ve backed before, advised, and watched scale into one of the most-used products in all of crypto.
That team is Galxe — and together with Gravity, they’re building what we believe will be web3’s connective tissue: a universal infrastructure stack for identity, loyalty, community-building, and seamless cross-chain interaction.
In a space that too often overpromises and under-delivers, Galxe and Gravity have consistently shipped, scaled, and adapted — all while staying grounded in real user needs. That’s why we invested in $G.
But to really understand why this matters now — and where it’s going next — let’s rewind a bit.
From Credentialing Startup to Web3 Super App
If you’ve spent any time in web3 over the past few years, chances are you’ve interacted with Galxe (formerly Project Galaxy), even if you didn’t realize it.
Galxe started in 2021 with a simple but powerful premise: what if your on-chain activity — the wallets you used, the votes you cast, the tokens you held — could form a portable, verified reputation? And what if developers could use that reputation to create tailored campaigns, rewards, and community programs?
That idea quickly found traction (seen here). By 2024, over 6,500 crypto projects, including Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, and many others, had launched campaigns using Galxe. Essentially, credential-based community growth initiatives — typically structured around quests, tasks, or airdrops — that reward users for meaningful on-chain and off-chain engagement. And their users— over 33 million now —have completed more than a billion of these on-chain quests, helping many renowned projects grow their communities while building their own web3 identities.
But as usage grew, so did the friction. Campaigns were running across multiple chains. Credentials were siloed. User data was fragmented. And every action — from minting an NFT to verifying an identity — carried gas fees and technical complexity.
It was clear Galxe had outgrown its infrastructure. So in 2024, they decided to build their own.
Introducing Gravity: A Layer 1 Built for Real Users
Enter Gravity — a brand-new blockchain purpose-built by Galxe to solve the problems they had encountered firsthand.
Launched in mid-2024, Gravity is a high-performance, EVM-compatible Layer 1 chain designed to make web3 feel more like web2: fast, seamless, and invisible when it needs to be. At its core, Gravity aims to eliminate friction — not by adding layers of abstraction, but by baking in smarter design at the protocol level.
Here’s what makes it different:
Speed: Gravity processes 7,000–8,000 transactions per second (TPS) in its current Devnet — 20x faster than Ethereum, and more than double Solana’s average — with sub-second finality.
Efficiency: It consumes up to 95% less compute than comparable chains, making it not just fast, but scalable and sustainable.
Interoperability: Gravity is omnichain-native, meaning it was built from day one to facilitate interactions across blockchains.
Abstraction: With features like gas sponsorship and intent-based transactions, users don’t need to worry about bridging tokens, swapping gas, or knowing which chain they’re on.
Restaking Security: Gravity uses cutting-edge security via EigenLayer and Babylon, incentivizing validators across multiple ecosystems to secure the network through restaking.
Combined, these features make Gravity less like an isolated Layer 1 — and more like a universal backbone for the apps, identities, and transactions of tomorrow.
$G: The Token at the Center of the Galaxy
To unify the Galxe and Gravity ecosystems, Galxe introduced the $G token in mid-2024 — replacing its original $GAL token with a redenomination of 1:60.
$G is now the native token of Gravity and the core utility token across the entire Galxe ecosystem. It serves several critical roles:
Governance: $G holders participate in the G DAO, shaping future upgrades and ecosystem funding.
Staking: Tokens can be staked to help secure the Gravity network and earn rewards.
Gas & Payments: $G is used for transactions across Gravity and for accessing Galxe’s products like Quest, Passport, and Alva.
Incentives: Developers and users are rewarded with $G for contributions, participation, and activity across the stack.
Since launching in 2024, Gravity now has 27m unique wallets connected, $70m of total value locked on-chain (or TVL, a common web3 metric akin to AUM) and has facilitated more than 400m transactions to date.
A Full Stack for the Omnichain Future
What’s most compelling about Gravity and Galxe isn’t just the infrastructure though — it’s the product suite they’re already powering.
Together, they’re creating a vertically integrated web3 platform, already including:
Galxe Passport: A decentralized identity app with 1.1 million users, verified through zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) tech.
Galxe Quest: A no-code loyalty and campaign builder used by 31M+ unique wallets to complete 1.1 billion quests.
Galxe Score: An on-chain reputation with 450k+ users system based on real participation, not speculation.
Galxe Earndrop: Streamlined token rewards for campaigns, integrated across wallets and chains.
Galxe Telegram Bot: A mini app bot launched in November to unite users socially, with over 900k monthly users.
Alva: An AI-powered Web3 research assistant, delivering insights via GPT-4o and live on-chain analytics.
These are not theoretical tools — they’re already live, growing, and widely used. And every one of them now runs on Gravity.
As the platform matures, we believe this full-stack approach will make Galxe + Gravity one of the most important onboarding platforms in Web3 — a true “Super App” built around user control, data sovereignty, and seamless access.
Why We Invested: A Rare Combination of Timing, Team & Traction
For us, this was a natural next step. We’ve known Galxe’s co-founders, Harry Zhang and Charles Wayn, since the early days. (In fact, we just interviewed Charles one-on-one last month at our annual Blocktalk conference - you can watch the full recording here, it’s excellent).
We’ve worked with them as investors and advisors through multiple market cycles — and we’ve seen them deliver not just vision, but product-market fit, actual revenue, and real user growth.
Today, they’ve built one of the most widely adopted platforms in all of crypto. And now, with Gravity, they’re transforming that success into a foundational infrastructure layer.
Furthermore, the ecosystem has committed over $50M in grants and VC backing to support developers and apps building on Gravity.
In short: adoption is high, infrastructure is real, and the next chapter is just beginning.
What Comes Next
The future of web3 won’t be built on raw infrastructure alone. It will be built on platforms that combine speed with usability, identity with privacy, and ownership with accessibility.
Galxe and Gravity are doing exactly that. By creating a seamless bridge between credentials, identity, and omnichain infrastructure, they’re unlocking what we believe is the next wave of scalable, user-friendly Web3 experiences — across gaming, finance, loyalty, and beyond.
For us, Gravity isn’t just another L1 play. It’s a bet on where and how the next generation of crypto users will come online. It’s a bet on identity-first, UX-forward architecture.
And with the $G token now powering both the base layer and the apps on top of it, this ecosystem is more aligned — and more investable — than ever before. We’re proud to have backed Galxe early, and we’re proud to be part of this next phase with Gravity and $G.
The universe, after all, doesn’t work without Gravity. And increasingly, neither does Web3.
Author
Christopher Nelson
Head of Digital Asset Research