On Saturday, August 24th, Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov was arrested and detained by French authorities after arriving on a flight from Azerbaijan.
On Wednesday, August 28th, the tech innovator was charged in a French court for a wide range of crimes allegedly perpetrated on the encrypted messaging app used by nearly a billion people worldwide. Now barred from leaving France, Durov is potentially facing years in prison for failing to prevent a variety of criminal activity on the platform he founded.
#FreeDurov
While Durov has been released from French custody after his initial detainment, his battle for freedom is far from over, and countless supporters from around the world are rallying behind him with cries of #FreeDurov.
It is in solidarity with this movement that Gala has created Dogs for the Founder, a new mini app tap-for-rewards game on Telegram, the latest in our growing tApp ecosystem of free games centering around rewards for free players.
Using the powerful web3 integration tools made possible by Telegram’s mini app platform and the TON blockchain, creators and supporters are able to stand behind Pavel Durov in a truly unique way, contributing to a more decentralized world that will protect crucial ideals like freedom of expression and privacy.
While Gala is not directly affiliated with Pavel Durov or Telegram, we have recognized the significance of the intense debate sparked by his being charged with these crimes.
We also recognize the recent noble efforts of the TON Foundation and the Telegram platform to pave the way like nothing before to worldwide adoption of web3 technology. When speaking about Gala’s mission, we have always used the word “Empowerment,” and we believe this is an issue that involves that same empowerment.
Just like the social media giants of the web2 world who are against the idea of users recognizing the value of their attention, there are forces in the world opposed to the basic empowering ideals of freedom, privacy and resistance to censorship.
Fight Against Censorship
Protest and dissent may look different today than in generations past, but they are still important when the stakes are high. At Gala, we will always stand for your empowerment and with those who value your privacy.
We are thrilled to announce that “Call God,” the debut NFT track from Nigerian Afrobeat sensation JIRE, is now available as a Gala Music NFT in limited supply. As of 1 pm PT today, you can own a piece of this electrifying track and be a part of JIRE’s musical journey from the very start.
About the Track: “Call God”
“Call God” is an anthem of resilience, faith and self-discovery that shares the artist’s personal story of struggle, perseverance, and unwavering faith in God. The track is a testament to his growth as an artist and an individual, capturing the essence of hustling with a hopeful spirit. Through “Call God,” JIRE encourages everyone to work hard, believe in themselves and trust in God to guide them toward achieving their dreams.
The infectious rhythm of Afrobeat blended with elements of World Music and Soul, make “Call God” a unique listening experience that transcends borders and speaks to the universal human spirit. It’s a celebration of life, love and the relentless pursuit of one’s goals, wrapped in JIRE’s distinctive sound.
OlaJIRE Ajiboye, popularly known as JIRE, is a rising star in the Afrobeat scene. Hailing from Lagos, Nigeria, the lifelong musician has a passion for creating music that reflects life’s ups and downs while spreading messages of peace and love. His unique style sets him apart as a versatile artist who’s not afraid to push the boundaries of genre.
JIRE’s music is not just about entertainment; it’s about connection and storytelling. He draws from his experiences, offering listeners a glimpse into his world and inspiring them to find strength in their own journeys. With “Call God,” JIRE steps onto the global web3 stage in power, ready to share his message and his music with the world.
As a part of Gala Music, owning “Call God” means more than just adding a new song to your collection. It’s about supporting a talented artist like JIRE from the outset of his web3 musical journey and joining a community of music lovers who believe in the power of decentralized music to change the world.
By purchasing “Call God,” you’ll not only enjoy JIRE’s debut track but also have the opportunity to collect daily $MUSIC rewards by pairing it with an active Jukebox Node. This is your chance to become part of something bigger—helping to shape the future of music in a way that directly supports artists and their creative visions. Gala Music is already paying out more than Spotify (per stream) by double, and we’re just getting started.
Don’t Miss Out – Listen and Purchase Now!
Join us in welcoming JIRE to the Gala Music family and dive into the vibrant world of “Call God.” Whether you’re a long-time fan of Afrobeat or new to the genre, this track promises to deliver a powerful and uplifting experience.
Head over to Gala Music now to listen to “Call God” and secure your copy. This debut track is just the beginning of JIRE’s exciting journey, and we can’t wait to see where it leads. Let’s show JIRE some love and support his musical career as it takes flight!
The growing Gala Film community is absolutely loving the action-horror anime series “Ghosts of Ruin,” available to watch now absolutely free on the web3 film platform that’s changing the way we experience video content.
This show is visually stunning and packed with action, drawing you deep into a future world of neural reality gaming where things aren’t as they seem.
Something terrifying and sinister is lurking within the massive game of Ruin. Its corporate creators will stop at nothing to launch with success, ensuring the world that everything is safe as they prepare for the Tournament of Ruin, an event that brings one hundred of the world’s most famous gamers together in heavily publicized competition.
For Aiden, a former member of Team Risen, something went terribly wrong. Somehow, the game got a little too real, leaving the young man hospitalized and fighting for his life. But this is what the Ruin founders don’t want you to know. Sweeping Aiden’s situation neatly under the rug, they held a contest to bring in a new player in the 11th hour. This is where Lee comes in. He’s learning fast, but Prism worries that he can never fill Aiden’s shoes.
It’s almost time for the Tournament of Ruin to begin, and Team Risen will sink or swim with the help of a classic gamer who’s only just begun to learn the ropes of neural reality.
Watch for Rewards
If you haven’t caught up yet, watch episodes 1-3 now on Gala Film. For each episode you watch, you’ll collect a free Mystery Box with a chance to unlock new content or win exclusive prizes. You can also buy additional Premium Mystery Boxes in the Ghosts of Ruin store to increase your chances of winning.
Each Mystery Box contains 4 prizes!
Collect NFT Moments
When you collect Gala Film’s NFT Moments from individual titles, you’re sharing a piece of that title’s success on the platform. Moment ownership means daily $FILM reward distribution.
Collect all the Moments in a Scene to boost your rewards.
Collect all the Scenes for a title for the MAX BOOST. 😎
Rewards are currently distributed as POPCORN!, the placeholder token that will later be redeemable for $FILM once that token has been officially launched.
Moments are actually yours, digital assets that can be transferred or traded. You’ll find one NFT Moment in each Moment Pack, available in the Ghosts of Ruin store for $79.99 each.
Imagine a company or an organization that instead of being controlled by a CEO or a board of directors, is run by the people who use its services or participate in its community. This is essentially what a DAO, or Decentralized Autonomous Organization, is.
In simpler terms, a DAO is like a cooperative business or club where everyone involved gets a say in how things are done. But instead of having meetings in person, all decisions and rules are managed online, using blockchain technology. This setup ensures that the organization is decentralized, meaning no single person or group has complete control.
It’s autonomous because it essentially operates itself according to rules encoded in smart contracts, which are self-executing pieces of code on a blockchain.
How Does a DAO Work?
DAOs work through a series of smart contracts, which are basically programs running on a blockchain. These contracts define the rules of the organization, automatically enforcing decisions made by the community. Here’s a breakdown:
Proposals: Any member of the DAO can propose changes, new projects or other decisions about current operations or the future of the DAO.
Voting: Members then vote on these proposals. In a truly decentralized system, each vote is weighted by how much stake (often in the form of tokens) each member holds.
Execution: Once a proposal is approved by the majority, the smart contract automatically executes the decision without need for any human intervention.
DAOs represent a shift from traditional hierarchical structures to more community-driven models. Here’s why they’re significant in the web3 world:
Decentralization: Power is distributed among all members instead of concentrated into a single centralized entity, reducing the risk of corruption or poor management. This distribution also reduces the consumer-to-business trust necessary for an effective organization. In fact, DAOs could almost alternately be called democratized autonomous organizations, but decentralization is a more apt description.
Transparency: Every decision and transaction is recorded on the blockchain, making the organization’s operations fully transparent. For centralized organizations to achieve this level of transparency, there must be a well established routine of sharing information with the users, such as the way publicly owned companies share quarterly financial reports or how a traditional non-profit organization’s financials are shared with its community.
Inclusivity: Anyone with internet access and the required tokens can participate, making DAOs more inclusive than traditional organizations. Because of their ability to essentially manage themselves, DAOs lend themselves well to greater specialization, allowing people to participate in governance in fields for which they are especially qualified, no matter where they live in the world.
Global Reach: DAOs can operate across borders, allowing global participation without the need for a centralized authority.
Examples of DAO Benefits
To make this concept more relatable, let’s consider a few scenarios:
Community-Driven Development
Imagine a group of indie game developers who come together to create a new game. Instead of going through a traditional publisher, they form a DAO. Players and fans can buy tokens to join the DAO and vote on game features, funding allocation, or marketing strategies. This way, the game evolves according to the community’s preferences, and profits are distributed among all contributors.
In this example, the use of a DAO not only covers the governance of their project, but also provides development funding through the sale of tokens.
Charitable Organizations
A charity could be run as a DAO, where donors get to vote on which causes should receive funding. Because all transactions are on the blockchain, donors can see exactly how their money is being used, ensuring transparency and trust. As a result of these benefits, more people could be inclined to donate.
Government Organizations
While the governments of the world are understandably hesitant to begin using a technology as new as blockchain, DAOs would serve well for many aspects of government operations. As traditional democratized voting processes become more corruptible, the security and transparency of DAOs could help protect voting rights and election sovereignty, aligning more closely with the will of the people.
While the Gala ecosystem doesn’t currently operate as an official DAO, it shares many of the principles that make DAOs powerful. At Gala, community input is highly valued, especially through platforms like Discord and Telegram, where feedback is actively monitored and considered in decision-making.
For instance, Gala’s Founder’s Nodes—a network of community-run nodes—play a crucial role in maintaining and securing the GalaChain, which is a key part of the Gala ecosystem. These nodes are operated by community members, and the decisions regarding the ecosystem’s future increasingly involve community voting and participation, which mirrors the decentralized governance seen in DAOs. Nearly all important decisions about $GALA tokenomics are presented to the Founder’s Node community for a governance vote before being put into practice.
Gala’s Path Toward Decentralization
Gala is not just stopping at community feedback. The long-term vision is to move toward greater decentralized autonomy, similar to what a DAO offers. This means that as GalaChain evolves, Gala wishes to see control over the ecosystem gradually shift more toward the community, aligning with the ultimate goal of decentralization.
Even if Founder’s Node operators do not technically represent a DAO themselves, the goal is to see GalaChain channel creators ultimately having the ability to create DAOs for their project, platform, service, etc. We are creating a secure and scalable web3 ecosystem built on a layer-1 blockchain with the power to host numerous community-created DAOs.
In summary, while Gala isn’t a DAO in the strictest sense today, it embodies many DAO principles and is progressing toward a future where the community could have even more say in the governance and direction of the ecosystem.
Thanks for reading our latest web3 explainer article! Hopefully you learned a little something!
The fight continues, survivors! The challenges of this apocalyptic world require that everyday people rise from the ashes. These new heroes can come from any background, boasting skills honed by the need to survive.
We’re continuing to build new systems and ways to survive in The Walking Dead: Empires. Before we talk about what’s in store for September, though, we still have one epic hero left in August…
Carol was an unlikely candidate for apocalyptic warrior, but she quickly proved herself to be infinitely adaptable, becoming fierce, reliable, and a major advantage to any group she supports. And soon, you could recruit her to help build your empire.
Carol Sale
This sale takes place on Friday, August 30th at 7am PT. Carol Hero Cards will follow a tiered pricing structure based on the remaining supply, with Common Hero Cards staying at one low price throughout the sale.
This sale is not time-limited; Carol will be available in The Walking Dead: Empires Store until the supply is exhausted or her remaining Hero Cards are taken down to make room for new heroes in the future.
Like our other direct Hero Card sales, any Carol purchased in this sale will fulfill directly to GalaChain, ready to play in the game!
September Updates
Just as your empire grows, The Walking Dead: Empires is hard at work to implement new ways of bringing the world of the apocalypse to life. Before we wrap up our August event cycle, we wanted to talk about what to expect in September.
We’ll be taking a break from the regular event cycle during September. We appreciate you participating in these events over the past months. We’ve learned a lot from them, and the insight you’ve contributed will help shape the game in the future!
The current event cycle will end after this weekend’s stockpile event closes on Monday, September 2nd. Good luck with this last leaderboard, survivors!
This last event begins tomorrow. Are you ready?
There will certainly be more events coming in the future, but for now our team is concentrating on some important features that we can’t wait to get out to you, including an all-new. dungeon system that players will hopefully be able to check out in October. These instanced areas will soon give you more ways to survive and new challenges to overcome.
The Fight to Survive
Tomorrow begins the last leaderboard event for a while. Are you going to show off a top score this weekend?
Whether or not you’re crafting up a storm to dominate the competition, starting tomorrow you can suit up as Carol to face the challenges ahead. Don’t just survive with your empire… grow your empire.
