In a joint press release from Gala Games and Opera (the popular browser developer), it was announced today that a new building in the world of Mirandus will soon be released. The Grand Sanctuary will be auctioned on OpenSea and 100% of proceeds will be donated to charity.

There will be 8 Grand Sanctuary buildings auctioned beginning on July 12th, and they will have an important use in the world of Mirandus for new players. This collaborative building was created for several reasons, including a valuable way to educate and equip brand new players, to empower those who choose not to spend anything at the start of their adventure, and to build a culture of support and generosity through ongoing charitable giving.

Charity is and will always be very important to the Gala Games team. While we as a company continue to prosper and deliver value to our players and ecosystem, we will always do everything we can to give back by supporting charity initiatives. This is why we are so excited to bring you the Grand Sanctuary, created in collaboration with Opera, another company to whom charitable giving is also a high priority.

Find Sanctuary

For most new players in Mirandus, the Grand Sanctuary will be the first place they want to visit. There they will find the basics of survival, including a place of temporary protection and the resources necessary to begin being productive in the world. The Sanctuary will serve many purposes for new players. It will be a library, a school, an outfitter and a mission house. Even players who have spent nothing on in-game NFTs will be able to find what they need within the Grand Sanctuary’s walls. In this way, the Grand Sanctuary will play the vital role of empowering free-to-play players, making it possible for them to start earning in the game.

Cycle of Giving

The Grand Sanctuaries will have built-in economies of their own, which will create and foster a culture of support and generosity throughout the land. Every active player who uses the Sanctuary when they are new will have the satisfaction of knowing that a small portion of the earnings made possible by those provisions will be given to real-world charities. Basically, a portion of each player’s earning in the beginning will be automatically awarded to both the Sanctuary owner to fund further operation and expansion, and an IRL charity organization decided by Gala Games and Opera. It will become a cyclical organization of charity in the fantasy world of Mirandus as well as the real world.

More Power = More Fun

We are very excited to offer the Opera co-branded Grand Sanctuaries to level the playing field for new players of Mirandus. As a result, there will be less of a divide between spenders and free players. Those who spend money on NFTs will always have easier access to success and greater rewards, but by empowering even more of our players, we will create an even more fun and rewarding experience for everyone. It is our hope that the Grand Sanctuary will prove a valuable resource for all players of Mirandus.

Stay tuned for more information about the Grand Sanctuary as it becomes available, and be ready for the OpenSea charity auctions to begin on July 12th.

Joint Press Release: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gala-games-and-opera-announce-multi-level-partnership-to-create-carbon-neutral-nfts-301322430.html?tc=eml_cleartime

About Opera

Opera is leveraging 25 years at the forefront of web development, building browsers. With hundreds of millions of monthly engaged users across their product range and a team of 1800 engineers, researchers, analysts and marketeers across 10 countries. Opera is headquartered in Oslo Norway and listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange (OPRA).

Today Opera is building its audiences in Europe, Africa and Asia across 4 product categories; computer and laptop browsers, AI driven news platforms and fintech applications.

It is highly experienced in identifying consumer trends, needs and wants and developing products that meet demand quickly, capturing space and early adopters. The Opera browser has been equipped with a native Crypto Wallet and Web3 support since 2018.

About MercyCorps Ventures

Mercy Corps Ventures (MCV) is the impact investing arm of the leading global development organization, Mercy Corps. MCV invests in and accelerates tech-enabled solutions that strengthen the resilience of people and communities in frontier markets. It’s FinX initiative is reimagining the financial system with the world’s most vulnerable at the center of its design. FinX’s goal is to accelerate global financial inclusion by advancing innovative, responsible distributed ledgers, digital assets, cryptocurrencies, and other digital financial solutions that help people join the global economy and lift themselves out of poverty and create a roadmap for an inclusive financial system. mercycorps.org/ventures

While a game comes to life, there are certain moments that are always highly anticipated by team and community alike. They are milestone moments like product launches, beta releases and major updates. Today, the Mirandus development team led by Michael McCarthy is pleased to announce that we will soon be sharing one of these moments with select members of the Gala Games ecosystem. Get ready for your first opportunity to experience the world of Mirandus!

Get in the Game

On Saturday, July 3rd at 12:00 PT, we will be conducting an official stress test on the newly created Mirandus test server. Those with download access to the test server will be able to launch the application and bring an avatar to life for the first time ever in the world of Mirandus. Download access to this stress test will be limited only to members of Gala Gold. For those of you who cannot resist this opportunity but have not yet purchased your $10 Gala Gold membership, this is a better time than ever to get it done! Remember, afterward you’ll be a Gala Gold member for life.

During the stress test, there will also be an open AMA with key members of the team, hosted in Discord and broadcast across all Gala Games live channels.

What to Expect

This test server is a very rudimentary slice of the gameplay for a tiny section of a game board spun up just to see if the community can break it. Countless visual and mechanical details are not yet in place, but the spirit of the experience is very much alive in this testing environment. Avatars are able to run and jump, interacting with and viewing the limited environment in 3d.

The goal of this stress test is to discover how many players can join the experience at a time before there are problems so that we can pinpoint and create solutions for those problems. Basically, we want to fill the boat until it sinks, so please be patient and know that if and when something goes wrong during the stress test, it was all part of the plan. By getting an exciting sneak peak of this magnitude, you’ll also be able to provide valuable data and feedback for us in the development process. This is a perfect example of the win-win philosophies of a decentralized gaming platform in action, and we look forward to it just as much as you!

Get a Taste of Mirandus

Those of you concerned that this extremely limited version of Mirandus will not be exciting enough for you should know this: When the Gala Games team hopped into the test server together the other day, we had a fantastic time. Most of us were giddy with excitement as we ran around the world and envisioned in our imaginations all the future possibilities of this incredible game.

Thanks to everyone in our ecosystem for your patience, loyalty and continued support. We can hardly wait to share this milestone with you, and we hope that years from now, you’ll all get a chance to say “I was at the first party in Mirandus!”

The Gala Games Team has been hard at work driving towards ever-greater decentralization of the Gala Games Node Ecosystem. Today, we would like to present a proposal to the community for discussion. This post summarizes the current node reward structure and proposes a change.

TLDR: Below we lay out a potential scenario for node rewards that will better enable the node network to support the whole Gala Games Ecosystem. The more you contribute and the more stable that contribution, the better the rewards.

Legal Exemplar Disclaimer: This proposal has been created to spark discussion in the Gala Games community. Based on the input that Gala Games receives, this may or may not reflect the final proposal presented to the nodes for a consensus vote.

Now, without further delay, node development can best be broken into three “levels”:

Current State (Level 1)

We are still in the early phases of the Gala Node Network, with approximately 55% of the 50,000 total Founder’s Nodes already sold. In these early months, it has been very important to facilitate the growth of the Node Network by encouraging the community to spread the word and bring more people to join us in what we are doing. In this time, the primary function of nodes has been to ensure Node Operators are active and aware of the importance of being involved in the Gala Node Network. This has been accomplished by giving the same 1 point distribution to all Node Operators who keep their nodes online at least 25% of the time.

In this phase, referrals have been enjoying roughly 10% of the amount rewarded to Node Operators.

• Referral Bonus (one-time per node): 10 points
• Referral Bonus (recurring per node): 0.1 point
• Daily Points per Node: 1 point

There have been many concerns raised about the long-term effectiveness of this plan, which is why we believe a phased approach is necessary to reach the full potential of the Gala Node Network.

Next Phase (Level 2)

In the next phase, the Gala Node Network will begin hosting content for the Gala Decentralized Content Delivery Network (Gala DCDN). To facilitate this rollout there will not be strong hardware requirements, but there will be a minimum required.

Rewards will be based on reaching the minimum hardware requirements and scaled by uptime. Additional points will be given for providing stability for the network in the form of static IP addresses with open ports.

The purpose of these changes is to reward node operators for establishing a stable baseline for the Gala Node Network in preparation for Level 3.

• Level 2 points will be in addition to Level 1 points.
• Points will be calculated to 1 decimal place and rounded down.

Minimum Requirements:

• 50 GB Disk Space
• 4 GB Ram
• 2 CPU Cores
• 10 Megabit upload network connection

Points per Node uptime calculation: 10 Points * [Uptime%]

Points for stability calculation:

10 Points * [Uptime%] * Max([Qualified Nodes] — Abs([Unique IPs] — [Qualified Nodes]), 0)

Note: Nodes shifting between IPs will affect the stability of the network, so daily unique IPs in excess of the Qualified Node count will cause a reduction of points.

This means that the total number of points possible for a single node that is up for 24 hours and does not have a public IP is 11 points. (1 point for Level 1, 10 points for level 2)

This means that the total number of points possible for a single node that is up for 24 hours and has a publicly available IP is 21 points. (1 point for Level 1, 20 points for level 2)

Dealing with Potential Bad Actors

As the network scales up and provides more important services, it becomes critical for the network to be protected from bad actors. As part of Gala Game’s curator role for the network, Gala Games proposes that Gala Games and its partners (those utilizing the Gala DCDN) will monitor the network for any bad actors who attempt to falsify contributions, availability, performance, or otherwise defraud the network. Gala Games and its partners will also welcome reports of any suspected fraud and will research it accordingly. Ultimately, it will be up to decentralized action by the node network to enforce any penalties. A more detailed “bad actors” proposal will be provided to the nodes before any enforcement actions are taken. It is likely that said proposal will include the punishment of loss of DCDN and/or stability points for a period of time.

Future Phase (Level 3)

Level 3 is still being planned, but the suggested implementation is to have a set of workloads that Node Operators can select to have their node perform work for. Each workload will have:

• Suggested minimum requirements
• Performance Criteria
• Associated reward points

Reward points for a workload will change over time to allow the network to prioritize what is most needed. Each node operator may select which workloads they would like their node(s) to handle. Each workload will “Level Up” to its maximum earnings. This is to prevent nodes from rapidly switching workloads in an attempt to earn the most money which would impact the stability of the network.

Example Workloads:

Urgent Workloads:

In cases where there is an urgent need for a workload to be supported by nodes there will be a limited number of positions opened up where nodes will be able to accept the workload and immediately receive full points.