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Gala Founder’s Nodes| Omnibus Proposal (DRAFT)

July 1, 2022

Big updates are coming to the Gala Games Founder’s Node Ecosystem. Read on to learn more.

Gala Games is approaching a turning point with the upcoming launch of our own L1 Mainnet, the release of 20+ new games, and a whole host of other massive Ecosystem changes. In preparation for that, we are putting forth a proposal to prepare the Founder’s Nodes for the next phase of their evolution.

This proposal is BIG, and prior to the vote, we will host at least one AMA on the topic. The best way to think of this is an Omnibus Bill on the future of the Gala Games Ecosystem. Depending on conversation, there may be some changes to this, but a final version will be submitted before the final node vote.

The Halving: The Bonus Pool

There is another halving of the $GALA distribution in July. Last year, the cost of the halving was entirely borne by Gala Games, as Founder’s Nodes did not see a reduction in their total share of the distribution.

This year, we would like to propose that the halving occurs as normally, but that there be a further halving which would go to form a third distribution pool, The Bonus Pool.

The Bonus Pool is a new $GALA distribution pool designed to better recognize and reward Founder’s Node Owners who best support the Gala Games ecosystem.

The Bonus Pool would be funded from an additional halving of $GALA distribution across both the normal Founder’s Node and Gala Games sections, but then allocated to Founder’s Node operators who regularly exhibit positive, healthy actions and behaviors towards the whole Ecosystem. With the addition of this new pool, Node operators will not only get their standard daily $GALA distribution but also have the power to earn more $GALA — potentially receiving a daily amount greater than they might have with just the single halving.

Daily Bonus Pool distribution is determined on a points basis, where different actions and behaviors contribute different point amounts. Higher points means a higher percentage distribution from the Bonus Pool.

Listed below are sample actions and behaviors we are exploring as possible inputs for determining Daily Bonus Pool distribution. Some inputs will likely contribute more points than others.

Total quantity of $GALA and holding location (e.g. inventory vs wallet)
Holding duration
Value exchange (e.g. buying, selling, transferring Gala Games assets — measured in $GALA)
Other limited time actions (e.g. gameplay time, logins, etc)

The Bonus Pool is designed to give Founder’s Node operators greater control over their daily $GALA distribution in a way that promotes a healthy ecosystem. If you do not qualify for this additional pool, you can still receive your point-based distribution from the first pool.

Note: Upon the release of this proposal, it became clear that it was not well explained. Upon reflection, several facts are important. This does not change the halving schedule at all — it is simply a return to the previous schedule after Gala Games absorbed the entire halving in 2021. However, instead of simply returning to the previous distribution schedule, we have elected to use the remaining portion to establish a bonus pool to reward positive behavior. Graph included below.

Update (July 1, 2022): There will be a third option as well, which will simply maintain the 50/50 split of the current distribution and will result in no bonus pool being created.

If this passes:

The halving will progress but a separate pool will be established to reward Ecosystem-supporting behaviors.

If this doesn’t pass:

The halving will progress as normal and the distribution would look like this:

Organizational Approvals

As Gala Games has grown, we have invested hundreds of millions of dollars into new games, music, and other ventures related to the Gala Games Ecosystem. As this Ecosystem grows and expands, and as Project GYRI winds its way towards an actual launch, it is becoming clear that the way we have handled the approvals for games is not tenable for every single project going forward. This is especially true as we reach a point of greater decentralization, which will open the floodgates for other projects to build on GYRI. What this means is that it will no longer be feasible to have a Founder’s Node vote on every single title hoping to develop on the network, but rather have approvals on specific organizations given certain permissions on the network.

There are a number of reasons for this. The first is that in a decentralized network, peers don’t go through an actual “vote” to determine whether something accesses the network or not. If network fees are paid, access is granted. As we move towards a fuller decentralization and serve a curatorial role only for Gala Games titles, but open the network for others, the idea that every single title coming to the network goes through a “vote” window simply doesn’t scale.

The second reason is that while the concept of a Node vote is great on paper, in practice the votes have very poor participation. In the last year, there were governance proposals that had as few as 2,579 votes. The lowest participation of any vote was only 251 votes. Unfortunately, this makes it so that a very small and vocal percentage of the Node operators control the network as a whole, which isn’t good for anyone.

The initial solution to this is to have organizational approval for the actual organizations bringing content to the Nodes which requires a specific level of engagement over a period of time in order to pass. This means that if another organization, not affiliated with Gala Games, wanted to build on the network they would need to go through a Node vote process that would be somewhat different than the current process in that voting would be required and the vote would not progress until at least 50% of the Nodes had voted. As voting is a critical part of the duties of a Node operator, earnings would be halted on the Node until a vote was placed or until the Node vote was completed due to a majority of Nodes having voted for one option in the up/down vote to approve an organization. Once this organization is approved, it will have the ability to deploy games to the L1 without having to put each game through a separate approval process.

NFT drops will be set at a standard 4–8% as per usual for games coming to the Ecosystem and the protocol will generally support the types of decisions taken up until now. There will still be plenty of AMAs and information for Node operators when it comes to operationally supporting the games. This is important because Nodes will still be able to exercise their right to not support a given title by disabling its specific channel and workload on their Nodes, but they will no longer need to approve each individual title. In the event that the Nodes are absolutely opposed to a specific title, they will have the ability to essentially launch a recall vote, which would require greater than 75% of the Nodes to support a specific title recall, at which point it could be blocked from accessing the network.

If this passes:

Games coming to the network will no longer be approved on a per-title basis, but a per-publisher basis with Gala Games being the first publisher on the network.

If this does not pass:

We aren’t quite sure, because this Ecosystem won’t scale effectively in its current state.

Halting Node Sales and Restructuring of the Gala Games Fund

We are currently examining what it would take to establish an actual DAO to control the Gala Games Fund. More will come on this later, but we would like to halt the sales of the existing Founders Node licenses and allocate a portion of them to the fund. These Nodes could then generate operational income, and fund Ecosystem development, hackathons, games, music, film, etc, in a way completely separate from Gala. In this way, this fund could incentivize other entities to build on the GYRI blockchain, could fund other novel programs which we are unable to administrate, and would be able to operate in a way free from Gala interference.

In this case, the value of these ~7000 nodes, if the current sales curve were to be adhered to, would be approximately $2.04 billion , but they will be allocated to the governance fund and the previous $GALA-based fund will revert to Gala Games to fund this transaction.

If this passes:

Nodes are taken off the store and a portion of them are allocated to a user-controlled Fund.

If this does not pass:

No changes.

Nodes as NFTs!

This is the part that will excite Node owners the most. We know that from the very beginning, users have wanted to be able to prove ownership of a Node license with an NFT. This has not been possible while nodes were still on sale in the Gala Games store, but if they are being removed from the store one barrier to making them NFTs is removed. There may still be other requirements such as KYC requirements, but we are confident that these can be navigated.

There are two reasons we would like to do this:

The first is that Gala Games is transitioning to a purely Web3 based foundation. This means you will be able to gain access to some account functionality simply by connecting an external wallet to the platform. This will remove MANY of the onboarding barriers users currently experience. We are also working to integrate a third-party custodial SSO wallet, so you will be able to connect with a variety of other accounts as well.

The second is that we believe that Node operators should be able to do what they would like with their Nodes. We know that there are some people who may not believe in the direction the Gala Games Ecosystem is evolving and want to leave. We also know that there are others who very badly want to enter the Ecosystem but cannot afford the current price of the Founder’s Node license. The future plans go FAR beyond what is currently visible for Node owners, but before we move on to the next phase we want to make sure everyone is aligned. This would also allow for the trading of the Nodes on the secondary market, if that is something people desired.