AUSTIN, TEXAS – Web3 infrastructure and digital credential network Galxe (GAL) said Wednesday that it is crafting its own layer-1 smart contract platform called Gravity and will migrate all its products to the new blockchain.

The first version of the network, built on the Arbitrum Nitro tech stack, will start in June to test cross-chain settlements in a publicly transparent manner. The full-fledged Gravity Mainnet with native staking and restaking aims to go live in the second quarter of 2025. The reason for creating Gravity, said the Galaxe team, is that the platform's user base has significantly grown over the past three years, now counting 20 million users and 100 million monthly transactions. This required a more efficient and scalable solution to manage cross-chain interactions between 34 blockchains that Galxe supports.

"Existing solutions fell short in supporting the required complexity and scale, prompting Galxe to develop Gravity," the team said in a statement.

Gravity will be a proof-of-stake blockchain, simultaneously supporting restaking via EigenLayer and Babylon to leverage the Ethereum network's security. The chain also gets a new native token G, with the existing token GAL's contract migration already approved by the platform's decentralized autonomous organization.

The network will use Reth as execution layer and consensus algorithm Jolteon (AptosBFT) for near-instant transaction finality and high throughput, the team said. It will also be compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

Galxe Passport, which has nearly 1 million users, will be moved from BNB Chain (BNB) to Gravity, while the Galxe Score contract will migrate from Polygon (MATIC) to the new chain.