A statement of intent
Built
to Stay
Free.
How decentralized infrastructure makes truly independent game development possible — and what it means for you.
The money always
comes with strings.
Most indie devs start with a dream and end up with a compromise.
You pitch to publishers. They give you money, then they want a piece of your IP. They want a sequel before the first game ships. They want monetization systems you never designed for. They want the game done when it fits their release window — not when it's actually ready.
You take VC money. Now you've got a runway. 18 months to ship something before you're back pitching again. You learn to scope down, cut systems, ship what you can instead of what you envisioned.
You try to bootstrap entirely. It works, until life happens. One bad month. One family emergency. Most solo devs are closer to shelving everything than they'll admit.
The structure of game funding is designed — intentionally or not — to erode creative control.
I needed a different model.
Infrastructure
as independence.
Around 2022, a quieter side of the blockchain world started maturing. Not the casino side. The infrastructure side. Networks built to replace centralized cloud storage, centralized CDNs, centralized telecom. Real hardware. Real economic models. Real utility.
These networks — often called DePIN, or Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks — needed operators. People willing to run nodes that contribute real service to the network in exchange for token rewards. The income, once established, is consistent. It required capital to start, technical work to maintain, and patience to grow. But for someone willing to do that work, it creates something rare: reliable, recurring income with no employer and no investor.
I built a node portfolio. Then I built Gimped Hero Games on top of it.
The goal is to cover $750/month in total studio operating costs through node rewards alone. The portfolio is still growing toward that target — but the foundation is in place and the model is proven.
Four networks.
One goal.
World Mobile — Spark ↗
AirNode · Last-Mile Wi-Fi Coverage
Community-powered telecommunications deployed across Pakistan in partnership with WorldCall. Spark nodes provide last-mile Wi-Fi coverage to homes and small businesses. Revenue comes from real subscriber billing — not token inflation. Paid in USD/stablecoins monthly.
$1.70/node/month flat reward — consistent regardless of traffic. The most predictable revenue stream in the portfolio. World Mobile has scaled from zero to 100,000+ AirNodes and 3M+ daily users since launching in Pakistan — real network growth backing real subscriber revenue.
World Mobile — Ember ↗
AirNode · ISP Backbone Distribution
Unlike Spark's flat rate, EmberNode rewards are performance-based — tied directly to the volume of verified data traffic your node carries. EmberNodes sit at the distribution layer, connecting directly to the WorldCall ISP backbone and routing connectivity downstream to Spark nodes and subscribers.
Current earnings average $0.10/node/day — a performance-based figure that moves with network traffic. World Mobile has grown from a handful of nodes to 100,000+ AirNodes and 3M+ daily users since launching in Pakistan — and is now expanding into the Philippines. Every new subscriber added to the network is more traffic flowing through the distribution layer. More traffic means higher Ember earnings, automatically, without any action on the operator's side.
Avg $0.10/node/day — performance-based; will update as earnings data matures. Goal: 50 nodes. ROI scales upward as Pakistan's subscriber base grows — no intervention required. Network expanding to the Philippines in H2 2026.
Infinity Rising ↗
File Node Pools + Custom Domes · Cardano
A blockchain-integrated MMORPG on Cardano, currently in Early Access. File node pools serve as the game's distributed content delivery network — when players download or update the game, data is served from operator-run pools. As a pool operator, GHG captures rewards on both sides: pool fees and node earnings from ~75 delegators.
Beyond infrastructure, Custom Domes offer a creative angle: persistent, customizable spaces to prototype new game concepts and test mechanics with real players — before committing to a full production cycle.
RISE earns ~10,000 tokens/month regardless of price. Revenue scales directly with token appreciation. The table below shows what that looks like at key historical levels. (Formerly traded as COPI; rebranded Nov 2025.)
| Price | Context | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|---|
| $0.003 | Current (Apr 2026) | ~$33 | ~$403 |
| $0.010 | 3× current | ~$100 | ~$1,200 |
| $0.024 | Lifetime avg (2022–2026) | ~$240 | ~$2,880 |
| $0.050 | ~2× lifetime avg | ~$500 | ~$6,000 |
| $0.127 | COPI all-time high (2023) | ~$1,270 | ~$15,240 |
Lifetime average calculated from yearly price data (CoinLore/CoinGecko). All figures are estimates. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
90% of rewards are performance-based. Phase 2 is benchmarking rewards against USD value of download services, reducing token price dependency over time.
Iagon ↗
Decentralized Cloud Storage · Cardano
Decentralized cloud storage on Cardano — competing directly with AWS S3, Google Drive, and Azure Blob. GHG operates a Cyclone QS Pro with 2× Seagate IronWolf 12TB drives in RAID, providing 11TB of committed usable storage to the network.
IAG token rewards accumulate from activation but are claimable beginning November 2026. A second revenue stream — ADA fees from paying storage clients — activates as Iagon scales its commercial subscriber base. Long-horizon position; early operators establish tier placement before the network becomes competitive.
Cardano Stake Pool
Proof of Stake · Roadmap
A delegated proof-of-stake pool on Cardano. Block rewards flow to delegators and the pool operator. Cardano is the primary blockchain GHG builds on — running a stake pool is participation in that ecosystem, not just an income stream.
Lower priority than current active operations. Will revisit as the Cardano ecosystem and GHG's on-chain presence grows.
You bought it.
It's yours.
Think about the thousands of hours you've put into your favorite game. The rare items you discovered. The builds you spent weeks perfecting. The gear that took months to earn.
Now imagine you could sell any of that once you moved on. Not your account — the assets themselves. Peer-to-peer. No marketplace taking a massive cut. No company deciding whether the transaction is allowed.
Counter-Strike already proved the appetite exists. Skins sell for thousands of dollars. But there's a fundamental difference between a CS skin tied to an account that can be banned or deleted at any time, and a player-owned asset that belongs to you outright. One lives on a company's server, subject to their rules, their decisions, their continued existence. The other lives on a blockchain. It cannot be revoked. It cannot be taken back. It does not disappear when a studio shuts a server down.
That's what player-owned assets actually mean. Not speculation. Not a financial product. Just the simple, radical idea that if you spent hundreds of hours earning something in a game — it should be yours.
The GHG Commitment
- → No online service required. You bought the game. It runs. No servers to go dark, no forced updates, no authentication gates.
- → True ownership. Permanent. Player-owned assets cannot be revoked, modified, or taken back. Not by GHG. Not by anyone.
- → No ban hammer. No hostage content. We will never threaten players to extract compliance, and we will never lock your purchases behind seasonal compliance.
- → No data selling. Ever. Your information is not a product we sell. Full stop.
I am not responsible for anyone other than myself — and I am genuinely, completely grateful for every player who chooses to buy any game I make. That relationship deserves to be built on respect, not manipulation.
— Seth Blakely, Founder
No publisher.
No compromises.
Every major design decision in ManaBat exists because no one can pressure me to cut it.
The procedural world that evolves across 1,000 in-game years. The generational NPC system where characters remember what came before them. The decision to rebuild world generation from scratch when the first approach wasn't good enough — which I actually did. The refusal to ship a watered-down combat system when a deeper one is possible.
Publishers want shipping dates. Investors want comparable titles. Neither of them wants a game to ship when it's genuinely ready.
The node portfolio doesn't care whether ManaBat is 30% done or 90% done. It just runs. That stability changes what's possible. I can prototype hard systems first. I can cut what doesn't work. I can take the design seriously without someone else's money on the clock.
The game I'm making is the game I actually want to make.
A proof of concept
for anyone who needs it.
I'm not the first developer to feel trapped by the traditional funding model. I won't be the last.
But I might be one of the first to document publicly, in real time, that there's a different way. That decentralized infrastructure can fund creative work without demanding a piece of it. That you don't have to choose between artistic integrity and keeping the lights on.
If this model works for ManaBat, I want it to work for other indie devs too. I'd rather this become a story about a funding approach that changed what indie development could be — not just a story about one game.
That's what I'm building toward.
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