GIFs are color-indexed. In the original GIF format, there is a 256-colors color map for the whole file. An extension was made to this to allow a colormap per frame, but Gimp doesn't support it.
So for instance if you have animation where the first frames are mostly yellow, and things evolve to mostly blue, with the extended format you can have 256 shades of yellow in the first frame, and 256 shades of blue in the last. With Gimp's original GIF format you have at best 128 shades of yellow and 128 shades of blues, so less colors to work with an things look grainy.
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