Starting on Tuesday August 1, the Gala Games store will use the 3-day moving average price of tokens accepted as payment to protect purchasers against sudden volatility.

At Gala Games, our commitment has always been to foster a community of fairness, stability, and fun. We strive to make sure your experience is nothing short of exceptional, whether you’re adventuring in one of our games or navigating through the aisles of the Gala Games Store.

Previously, the prices of items were based on real-time data for $GALA and ETH. While this method allowed for market-responsive pricing, it also left room for sudden unexpected changes due to external factors like market manipulation and sudden volatility.

Many of you have expressed that this system creates unnecessary inconvenience and we’ve taken your feedback into consideration, so we’re introducing a new pricing model: the 3-day moving average. This change will significantly reduce the impact of sudden price swings and offer more consistent, predictable pricing.

A 3-day moving average is a calculated average of the most recent three days’ data, used to smooth out short-term fluctuations and highlight longer-term trends or cycles.

Here’s what this means for you: With this update, the prices you see in the store will reflect the average value of $GALA, ETH, SILK, etc. over the past three days. This smoother pricing approach makes sudden spikes or dips less impactful, providing a more balanced and user-friendly shopping experience.

The change takes effect starting on Tuesday, August 1st and will likely remain permanent, but for now is considered a test of the new pricing system.

Our goal with this change is to protect our valued users against the effects of sudden market volatility and potential manipulation. We want you to shop with confidence, knowing that the pricing you encounter is steady and fair.

As always, we’re grateful for your continued support and feedback. We’re excited about this improvement and we hope you are too. So head on over to the Gala Games Store and check out the new pricing model in action!

Join the discussion in Discord

REP shares its vision for the future of social media, powered by GalaChain

As recently announced in THIS BLOG, REP is coming to GalaChain. It’s already built on a NEAR testnet, and its full features will blow you away once integrated with the max power of Gala Games’ blockchain.

Today, we’re pleased to share REP’s extensive Vision Paper, published as a downloadable PDF through THIS LINK.

We hope this Vision Paper informs our community about the intentions behind REP, as well as the outlined plans for execution of this groundbreaking web3 social network.

The Future of REP on GalaChain

As we build REP on GalaChain and roll it out in the months ahead, our intention is to demonstrate its capabilities by creating Gala Friends, the Gala Games social network you deserve.

We’re incredibly tempted to share all our treasure hunt plans with you in advance, but that would probably spoil the fun, so we’ll try to stay strong… Looking at you, BitBender.

We’ll leave you today with a letter from REP founder Neil Haran, also added as a foreword to the REP Vision Paper. Thanks as always for being part of this community!

Vision Paper Letter

It was back in 2002 when my journey in video game development began. Working with giants like Vivendi, Electronic Arts, and LucasFilm, I contributed to major titles like Simpsons Hit & Run, Hulk, and Scarface. The year 2008 presented an important crossroad in my career — choosing between Blizzard and Zynga. My choice was swayed during an interview with Eric Schiermeyer, now founder and CEO of Gala Games, and I took the Zynga path.

That choice gave me invaluable insight into gamification’s impact, a lesson that would later become instrumental in my blockchain initiatives. But there was a darker side, and by 2010, I had seen enough. With a desire to contribute positively to the gaming world, I launched my own gaming company, focusing on educational games. We brought to life a game called Rawbots which was a game to help kids learn physics, programming and robotics. This venture was intense, thrilling, and exhausting, and eventually, it led me to a new arena — blockchain.

Over the years, my activist side found purpose in the world of blockchain technology. I aimed to create simple, user-friendly interfaces to bring this groundbreaking technology to the masses. The vision? Next-gen social networks. The foundation? Gamification and cooperation.

I’ve always been drawn to the idea of using gamification to inspire positive societal behavior, like the ‘pay it forward’ ethos — an idea that resonated deeply with me. This passion, combined with my commitment to usability, drew me back to collaborating with Eric Schiermeyer. He understood the importance of building interfaces so simple they could be called “stupid simple”, a philosophy we adopted at Zynga.

Alongside these ventures, I’ve been an observer and critic of social media’s monopolistic and exploitative practices. A particular turning point was when Mark Zuckerberg revealed his stark hypocrisy regarding personal data privacy. His cavalier attitude towards our rights motivated me to cut ties with Facebook, a decision I’ve never regretted.

As I see the ongoing war between Twitter and Threads, it is clear to me that the need for a privacy-respecting, censorship-resistant, fully on-chain social network is paramount. A platform where users truly own their data. This belief drives my work with Gala Games.

The gamified social network we’re building will not only connect Gala Games, Gala film & music, and anything NFT related but also provide a seamless experience for users navigating the metaverse. We’re also paving the way for NFT interoperability across games. Imagine being able to find Spider Tanks NFTs not only on Earth, but also in our game Rawbots with its billions of star systems. You could find spider tank weapons on some planets, which could also be integrated as robot parts within Rawbots.

Embarking on this journey with Gala Games is truly exhilarating. We’re dedicated to ensuring that you truly own your digital experience, and we can’t wait to unveil what we’re putting together. Welcome to the future of social media. Welcome to REP.

Neil Haran
Founder and CEO, REP

Vision Paper

If you want to stay Ahead of the Game, check out the replay of last week’s new episode, featuring hard-hitting questions and a chat with CryptoStache.

There’s another great episode in the books, and it seems like this weekly show is really catching on. There are a bunch of fun on-stream toys to play with, we can feature some of your favorite guests from the web3 world, and Jason has a chance to tackle hard-hitting questions. He loves that.

Watch the replay from last week here, or jump straight to a particular chapter or question below!

00:00 — Intro 
00:40 — Title 
02:11 — Call for Questions 
03:42 — The Walking Dead: Empires video sneak peek 
04:30 — SDCC Party Reveal 
06:25 — Wen Hoodies? NOW! 
06:45 — NFTS on Google Play!? 
08:20 — Interview with CryptoStache 
11:55 — Question for Stache — “What is something we could do better?” 
16:25 — Q&A Begins 
16:30 — When will Treasure Chest $GALA convert to GalaChain? 
19:20 — Question about strategy regarding PokerGO Play & GRIT 
23:30 — How much $GALA is burned when building new projects like REP? 25:40 — CryptoStache interview resumes 
31:15 — Question for Stache — “What is something we have done well?” 
36:43 — Question for Stache — “What is something that you are excited for?” 38:45 — Stache’s final thoughts 
41:20 — Jason addresses the current Node proposal discussion 
42:16 — “Why won’t you answer my hard questions in this AOTG?” 
42:27 — Jason takes hard questions 
43:10 — Tour of r/GalaNodeBonusPool community proposals 
59:30 — Summary of how proposal was informed by community proposals 
1:03:36 — The Walking Dead: Empires playtest for everyone? 
1:03:45 — Wen Legacy update? 
1:04:22 — DeFi? 
1:06:10 — What’s next for REP? 
1:07:30 — Jason’s Twitter giveaway

In last week’s recorded interview with CryptoStache, there were plenty of hardball thoughts, or hot takes, as Jason and Stache lovingly dubbed them. To get more than that, you’ll have to watch the interview portion(s) of the recorded video. Pardon our technical issues that caused the interview to be shared in 2 parts.

Special Episode Next Week

For next week’s Ep9, Jason, Paul and the rest of the team are psyched to bring you a special on-location Ahead of the Game from our kickass Comic-Con party.

We rented an iconic brewery in downtown San Diego for the weekend and turned it into an immersive gaming escape worthy of Gala Games. We call it Club Clandestine, and it’s every bit as elegant as it sounds. If you’re anywhere near San Diego, come by during our open hours:

Thursday: 2–6pm PT
Friday: 12–4pm PT
Saturday: 12–4pm PT

Thursday’s Ahead of the Game will be streamed from Club Clandestine so Gala Gamers at home will have a chance to behold its majesty. Party guests may even have an opportunity to appear live on the show with BitBender!

Set a notification now so you don’t miss it at 4pm PT tomorrow, Thursday July 20th!

Who thinks BitBender should dress in The Walking Dead: Empires cosplay for the party? Let us know which character in the comments below, or in Discord!

After a great deal of community feedback, here is the revised proposal that will soon be up for Founder’s Node governance vote.

As we venture into the frontier of blockchain technology, the community’s enthusiastic engagement has been pivotal in shaping the potential strategies for our ecosystem. The dialogue on the concept of ‘Node-Based Cumulative Lifetime Points’ has elicited extensive discussions on Discord, email exchanges, and even exhaustive exploration of the original bonus pool Reddit discussion.

With nine emails offering suggested changes, and thousands of messages exchanged, we appreciate the community’s collaborative spirit. The wealth of perspectives shared has highlighted the crucial elements of the original bonus pool discussion that could be integrated into our new system, as well as identified the elements that were impractical due to their lack of connection with actual node operations.

The Bonus Pool Concept

However, before we begin, we would like to address some concerns raised by members of the Founder’s Node community surrounding the previously discussed “bonus pool” and why that was left on the wayside as we have moved in this direction.

The whole point behind the bonus pool was to get more $GALA in the hands of the Founder’s Node operators. The original proposal was to have a 25/25/50 split between Gala Games, Base Point Operation, and the “Bonus Pool”. This was all in the interest of incentivizing node operation, and we know that one of the reasons people run nodes is to get tokens. Now, what would this math look like?

To oversimplify it, using the old halving tranche for 2023 (so post July 22nd), a node operator would be getting, on average 23,400 $GALA per year. The 25% “base distro” would be 7,812 $GALA per year (assuming 50,000 nodes), and then depending on user behavior, different points could be allocated and “bonuses” won. This is incredibly complex, and none of the ideas proposed by the community actually advanced decentralization.

Before we advanced THIS vote, we wanted to at least honor the idea behind the bonus point vote, which was to give the Founder’s Nodes a greater incentive. In comes the burn, which we said from the beginning was to align ourselves with the Founder’s Nodes and to give more rewards to the Founder’s Nodes over time. By kicking this burn off the original idea behind the bonus pool of giving the Founder’s Nodes a bonus was accomplished. It is not a small bonus, either. Because of that burn, Founder’s Nodes are currently making ~533% of what they would be making WITH the bonus pool.

So, why didn’t we have a discussion on that? Anyone with the slightest modicum of legal understanding of the space knows that to discuss a potential future burn is tantamount to token price manipulation. However, we assumed that if Founder’s Node Operator behavior and sentiment stayed the same as it was previously, the question of “would you like more or less rewards for the operation of your node” would be met with a predictable response.

Modifications to the Previous Discussion Draft

The dozens of hours of communication, emails, AMAs, and live streams have resulted in an incredible amount of creative output from the community. Your insights have led to four significant changes to the initial proposal:

1.) Dr. Wookie’s recommendation led us to revise the logarithmic function, changing the multiplier from 5.7 to 6.5. This adjustment makes the bonuses for those holding more than one node slightly higher.

2.) After spirited discussions, we have decided to propose decrementing points at a rate which aligns roughly with the rate of halving using the following schedule:

• Tranche 1–1 point per 1000 GALA minted to GalaChain
• Tranche 2–1 point per 500 GALA minted to GalaChain
• Tranche 3–1 point per 250 GALA minted to GalaChain
• Tranche 4–1 point per 125 GALA minted to GalaChain
• Tranche 5–1 point per 62.5 GALA minted to GalaChain

3.) We have determined a trial period for this new structure. It will be implemented for 12 months from the date it is put into effect. To ensure continuous community involvement, a new discussion will start after 9 months to evaluate the system’s effectiveness and decide whether it should continue, be adjusted, or be reverted. A subsequent proposal will be put forth after 10 months, and the community will vote on the next course of action. Please note that any changes to the system will likely take at least 60 days to implement.

4.) Lastly, we’re introducing a daily “free mint” per node allowance. This will equate to 5% of the average daily emission per node for that day (totalDailyMint/50,000) that can be minted to GalaChain without any point deduction. However, this is a DAILY allowance and does not stack. This ensures that node operators taking advantage of this are actively engaged and not “set it and forget it” operators.

Below you will find the full text of the current draft of the proposal. You will find that some of it is repetitive of what has already been stated, but is included in the official proposal text for completeness’ sake. Conversation will take place around this draft for approximately the next week, at which time some of the additions from the community may be added before it goes to a final vote on July 24th, 2023.

____________________________

The Draft Governance Proposal (v2): Implementing a Node-Based Cumulative Lifetime Points Structure with New Logarithmic Function to Advance Decentralization

Introduction

This governance proposal presents an innovative bonus points structure based on the concept of “Node-Based Cumulative Lifetime Points.” This strategy focuses on the number of Nodes operated by a user, aiming to counteract platform centralization and foster decentralization within our ecosystem. With the proposed system, cumulative lifetime points accrue daily, directly correlating with your active participation in our community.

Proposal Details

We propose the adoption of a new logarithmic function, P = 6.5*log10(N) (+1 if N=1), for the allocation of bonus points. Here, N signifies the number of Nodes a user operates, and P denotes the points awarded. Here are the points for various Node counts (N) using this function, rounded to two decimal places:

Operating 1 Node: 6.5*log10(1) + 1 = 1 point
Operating 2 Nodes: 6.5*log10(2) ≈ 1.95 points
Operating 5 Nodes: 6.5*log10(5) ≈ 4.54 points
Operating 10 Nodes: 6.5*log10(10) ≈ 6.50 points
Operating 25 Nodes: 6.5*log10(25) ≈ 9.08 points
Operating 50 Nodes: 6.5*log10(50) ≈ 11.04 points
Operating 100 Nodes: 6.5*log10(100) ≈ 13.00 points
Operating 250 Nodes: 6.5*log10(250) ≈ 15.58 points
Operating 500 Nodes: 6.5*log10(500) ≈ 17.54 points
Operating 1000 Nodes: 6.5*log10(1000) ≈ 19.50 points
Operating 7000 Nodes: 6.5*log10(7000) ≈ 24.99 points

Using this updated logarithmic function, Node operation decentralization is encouraged.

These points will accrue in addition to the “base distribution” point which a node operator receives for operating their nodes. This means that:

A user operating one node will have:

• Day 1: 1 base point and 1 bonus point (2 points total)
• Day 2: 1 base point and 1+1 bonus points (3 points total)
• Day 3: 1 base point and 1+1+1 bonus points (4 points total)

…etc

A user operating five nodes will have:

• Day 1: 5 base points and 4.54 bonus points (9.54 points total)
• Day 2: 5 base points and 4.54+4.54 bonus points (14.08 points total)
• Day 3: 5 base points and 4.54+4.54+4.54 bonus points (18.62 points total)

…etc

Please note, these values are approximate and may slightly differ due to rounding.

Cumulative lifetime points will be added to the distribution daily, rewarding consistent Node operators over time. However, these bonus points will be deducted when users mint their $GALA at a rate which aligns roughly with the rate of halving using the following schedule:

• Tranche 1–1 point per 1000 GALA minted to GalaChain
• Tranche 2–1 point per 500 GALA minted to GalaChain
• Tranche 3–1 point per 250 GALA minted to GalaChain
• Tranche 4–1 point per 125 GALA minted to GalaChain
• Tranche 5–1 point per 62.5 GALA minted to GalaChain

This mint fee in the form of bonus points creates a dynamic ecosystem where node operators ascend and descend through the distribution ranking based on their own behavior.

There will also be a daily “free mint” allowance. This will equate to 5% of the average daily emission per node for that day (totalDailyFNMint/50,000) that can be minted to GalaChain without any point deduction. However, this is a DAILY allowance and does not stack. This ensures that node operators taking advantage of this are actively engaged and not “set it and forget it” operators.

Note: It is not possible to go below your daily base distribution point total.

This means:

A user with 25,000 unminted $GALA and 250 bonus points during a period in which emissions were in tranche 2 would incur a loss of 50 bonus points if they minted all of their $GALA, resulting in a final distribution point total of 200 points. The following day, points would be allocated according to the following function:

Point accrual = 6.5*log10(N) (+1 if N=1) (where N = number of operational nodes meeting minimum in the user’s account)

New Founder’s Nodes joining our ecosystem will begin with the lowest Node bonus point total from currently operational Nodes, providing a fair starting point and ensuring that they are not disadvantaged by having to catch up from zero. While this initially introduces an incentive to spread nodes around to “reset” bonus points following a mint, it will gradually trend downwards as more people mint and engage in the ecosystem. This is just to prevent it from becoming severely imbalanced.

Implementation Duration:

If passed, this distribution will be in implementation for 12 months from the date it is put into effect. To ensure continuous community involvement, a new discussion will start after 9 months to evaluate the system’s effectiveness and decide whether it should continue, be adjusted, or be reverted. A subsequent proposal will be put forth after 10 months, and the community will vote on the next course of action. Please note that any changes to the system will likely take at least 60 days to implement.

____________________________

The comprehensive feedback from the community has played an invaluable role in refining the ‘Node-Based Cumulative Lifetime Points’ system. As we progress with these amendments, we remain committed to fostering an inclusive, engaging, and vibrant community, constantly adapting to maximize decentralization.

As always, your feedback is invaluable. The next stages of this journey promise to be an exciting voyage towards a more decentralized, robust, and sustainable network. Let’s continue to shape the future of blockchain technology together.

Governance Vote Node Proposal:

Should the Distribution System with Stacking Bonus Elements be integrated into the Founder’s Node Ecosystem?

Option 1.): Yes — The distribution should be modified allowing for greater decentralization through economic incentives.

Option 2.): No — The distribution should stay the same.