As we keep rolling along and continue picking up the pace, Gala is delighted to announce another new addition to our winning team! In the next of our team profile series, allow us to formally introduce a new full stack engineer for the Gala ecosystem: Michael Fearn.

Michael brings a keen interest in software development, both for work and in his spare time, and he really enjoys exploring new ways for players to interact with gaming systems (Gala Games’ specialty). Michael is a lover of virtual reality and a seeker of knowledge, continually self-educating by reading up on the latest in software development.

In his spare time, Michael is into rock-climbing, gaming, fantasy, cosplay and “hanging out with his cat.” He also has experience in 3D printing, and constructing props for cosplay, though he hasn’t been able to spend as much time as he likes lately with that hobby. Perhaps in the future when Galacon goes physical, Michael will be able to spearhead some organized cosplay efforts and get back into it!

Like every one of us at Gala, Michael loves games. His favorite is Fallout 3, the 2008 masterpiece from Bethesda Softworks, which he continues to play periodically to this day. It was the story and lore of the Fallout world that really hooked Michael, with all its fascinating nuances and details. We’ve almost certainly got a future Mirandus player on our hands!

Michael is thrilled to join up with Gala Games, giving him a chance to bring all his awesome skills together to do rewarding work, developing products to help others find more freedom and fulfillment in their lives through a renewed sense of play. Welcome to Gala Games, Michael!

Totally Random Fact from Michael: “Synthwave is my spirit animal.”

UPDATE: This proposal passed with a very significant margin. This means that at the halving, there will NOT be a reduction of rewards being distributed to the Node Network in the July 2021 halving.

While we do not currently have governance proposals active on the node network, we DO expect that they would be reactivated within the next several weeks. There are MANY proposals that we will be collating and putting forward, but the first proposal we would like to put to the nodes is one which we feel that most node owners will be in favor of. We are officially announcing that this will be the first proposal which will be put to a governance vote.

Currently, as explained in numerous places, the division of the distribution is 25% to the node owners, and 75% to the curatorship of Gala Games for Ecosystem Development, etc. When the next halving occurs, the total amount of GALA distributed per day will be cut in half. This means that if the current schedule is maintained, the amount of GALA which is distributed to the nodes would be reduced from ~8.5m to ~4.25m.

However, we believe that decentralization is extremely important, so we are proposing that on July 21st, rather than maintaining the current ratio, we shift the ratio so that the Node Operator rewards stay the same. If our proposal is accepted by the Node Operators, the total daily distribution would look like this:

This will be the first major distribution change proposal we put to the Gala Games Node Network, and we are excited to see how people respond with their votes. There are going to be other votes on other issues, but this is a major step towards greater decentralization and we expect it to be greeted with enthusiasm.

Let us know what you think! Join our Discord at galagames.chat and give us your feelings on the matter!