Announce the latest development in our partnership with Coinflow: the integration of Google Pay and Apple Pay as new payment options for the Gala Games ecosystem. This update marks a significant milestone in our mission to provide our community with the most accessible and versatile payment solutions.
Expanding Payment Horizons
Continuing to build on our recent integration with Coinflow, we’re now enabling Google Pay and Apple Pay as payment methods, making it easier than ever for users to interact with our platform. This enhancement empowers our users to engage with the Gala ecosystem using the payment tools they trust and prefer, streamlining the experience of owning and interacting with digital assets on GalaChain.
For the first phase of this rollout, Google Pay and Apple Pay options through Coinflow are limited only to the Gala Games store, but with future updates we hope to expand this payment variety to Gala Music, Gala Film and beyond.
Streamlined Mobile Experience
As part of our ongoing efforts to innovate and enhance the user experience, the addition of Google Pay and Apple Pay underscores our commitment to bringing decentralized entertainment to a broader audience. With the recent wave of new users coming from our free Telegram mini app “tapper” games, Treasure Tapper and Music Coin, creating a smooth mobile onboarding experience has become especially important.
These payment methods are recognized and used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, making them a natural fit for our ecosystem. With this integration, we are not only simplifying transactions but also paving the way for more mainstream adoption of web3 digital assets.
The Future of Decentralized Entertainment
We are excited about the possibilities this integration opens up for our users and the broader Gala community. As we continue to innovate and expand our ecosystem, we remain committed to making decentralized entertainment more accessible, engaging and rewarding for everyone.
Stay tuned for more updates, and thank you for being a part of our journey! Together, we are reshaping the future of entertainment on GalaChain.
You need more to survive out there than just grit and strength. You need heart.
Today we’re proud to welcome back a hero who has plenty of compassion to go around, along with the ability to look at life in the apocalypse with a fresh eye. Anyone who watched him grow up in AMC’s The Walking Dead knows that Carl’s bravery and determination were the backbone of his family and the survivors around him. Now you can bring that unique strength to your empire!
Sale Details
This sale takes place on Friday, August 23rd at 7am PT. Carl 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, and Carl will remain available in The Walking Dead: Empires Store until the supply is exhausted or it is removed to make room for new heroes in the future.
Like our other direct Hero Card sales, Carl cards purchased in this sale will fulfill directly to GalaChain and be usable in the game right away!
Survival at Any Cost
A weekend Walker Wipeout is coming. Are you ready for the challenge? Have you scavenged enough this week to climb the leaderboard?
Carl will arrive for direct purchase tomorrow. Will you welcome him and see how great your empire could be?
In the simplest terms, a hash is like a digital fingerprint for data.
Imagine you have a piece of information—a document, a photo or even a piece of text. When you run this information through a hash function (a specific type of algorithm), it generates a unique string of characters called a hash. No matter the size of the original data, the resulting hash is always of a fixed length. This is a key feature of hash functions: They condense data into a fixed-size output.
Think of it like shredding a document and then encoding the resulting pile of shredded paper into a fixed-sized box. No matter how long or short the original document was, the box is always the same size, and it’s nearly impossible to reconstruct the original document from the box alone. Similarly, it’s computationally infeasible to revert a hash back into its original data.
Hashes are foundational to many blockchain technologies, including cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. They are integral to how blockchain ensures the integrity and security of data. Here are some key reasons why hashes are so important in Web3:
Data Integrity: Hashes ensure that the data hasn’t been altered. When data is hashed, even the slightest change in the input (like changing a single letter in a text) will produce a completely different hash. This makes it easy to detect tampering or corruption.
The decentralized internet as we know it is possible through the use of hash functions, as demonstrated by the Interplanetary File System and its distributed hash table. IPFS uses hash functions to verify the integrity of all data shared to what has become known as the decentralized internet. In fact, Gala Founder’s Nodes power a large portion of this data, giving the Gala ecosystem a large share in the responsibility of web3’s future.
Blockchain Security: In blockchain, hashes are used to link blocks of data together. Each block contains the hash of the previous block, forming a chain. If someone tries to alter the data in a block, the hash of that block changes, which then changes the hash of the subsequent block, and so on. This makes it extremely difficult to alter any information in the blockchain without detection.
Efficient Data Storage: Hashes allow large amounts of data to be represented by a small, fixed-size string. This makes storing and verifying data in blockchain systems much more efficient.
Proof of Work: In cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, hash functions are used in the mining process. Miners compete to find a hash that meets certain criteria (e.g., it must start with a certain number of zeros), which requires computational power. This process, known as “proof of work,” secures the network and adds new blocks to the blockchain.
How Hashes Work
To dive a bit deeper, let’s explore how a hash function works. A common hash function used in blockchain is SHA-256 (Secure Hash Algorithm 256-bit). When you input data into SHA-256, it generates a 256-bit (or 64-character) hash. No matter what data you input—a single letter or an entire book—the output is always 64 characters long.
For example:
The text “Hello, World!” might hash to something like a591a6d40bf420404a011733cfb7b190d62c65bf0bcda32b575a0f76c6e53a2e.
If you change it to “Hello, world!” (note the lowercase ‘w’), the hash could be 64ec88ca00b268e5ba1a35678a1b5316d212f4f366b247724e663cd0da0927d5.
This dramatic change in the hash output despite a minor change in input is known as the “avalanche effect,” a property that makes hash functions extremely secure, reliable and suitable for blockchain technology.
Hashes are used in various Web3 applications beyond just cryptocurrencies:
Smart Contracts: Smart contracts often use hashes to verify the integrity of data or ensure that certain conditions have been met.
Digital Signatures: When sending transactions on a blockchain, digital signatures use hash functions to securely sign and verify the authenticity of messages.
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs): NFTs often include metadata that is hashed to ensure the data related to the token (like the digital artwork it represents) remains unchanged.
In the world of Web3, hashes are like the glue that holds everything together. They ensure data integrity, provide security, and allow for efficient data handling. Whether you’re dealing with cryptocurrencies, smart contracts, or NFTs, understanding hashes is crucial to grasping how the blockchain works.
Hopefully this quick explainer article has helped you advance your understanding of the tech behind the web3 world. Until next time!
Yield farming lets users get rewarded by staking digital assets on decentralized platforms. Learn how it works, why it’s important and what to watch out for in this introductory explainer blog.
Liquidity is a key concept in Web3, enabling smooth and efficient trading of crypto assets. Learn how liquidity pools and liquidity providers make decentralized platforms work.
Stablecoins have emerged as an important part of the web3 world, playing a crucial role in providing financial stability to a typically volatile cryptocurrency market. For those new to blockchain and crypto, stablecoins might seem like a complex concept, but they’re actually quite simple. Think of them as a “digital version of the dollar” or…
Learn about nodes, the essential building blocks of decentralized networks, and discover the unique role of Gala Founder’s Nodes in the Gala ecosystem.
Imagine that you were a scammer trying to target a particular group of people… let’s say people who like to spend their days at the lake relaxing with a fishing pole hanging in the water. Who knows why – maybe you are trying to sell counterfeit lures? Coordinate putting out some AI-enabled fishing rod that’s collecting fingerprint data while they laze their days away? Motivations are rather inconsequential for this example.
You could pay for a big list of dark web data, but you could also just insert yourself into that community. You can hop on message boards, join chat groups, heck you could even go hang around local bait shops. Before long, you’ve got a lot of useful demographic data on people that are part of that group. Maybe all you have is some emails and IP addresses… but that’s enough to start refining your list and getting more information.
The same is true with Discord. The Gala community is a great place for the latest news and robust conversation about every aspect of the Gala Ecosystem. The popularity and richness of social connections that are forged on our Discord server or Telegram channel, however, also make them a popular destination for another type – scammers. It’s important to know and understand the tactics of these digital miscreants to keep your digital assets safe while still participating in any digital community.
Welcome to the 8th installment of The Guardian Papers, where we try to impart the wisdom that everyone should have to start a successful journey through the world of digital ownership. The blockchain world is still in its infancy. We here at Gala believe that empowering each and any member of our community makes us stronger as a whole.
Miss an issue of the Guardian Papers!? Check out past editions below!
It is our hope that this series has and will continue to present foundational information that will not only provide a base understanding of how to keep your blockchain footprint secure, but will also help inform your journey through this digital adventure so you can ask better questions, do better research, and make better decisions to help guard your entire community.
The Dark Side of Community
Discord was originally made for gamers. As the scope of the platform has grown to include countless massively popular communities, however, it has also attracted the riffraff that stalks digital space for the opportunity to steal from the unwitting. Because Discord servers categorize people into common interests, it’s easy for scammers to get inside groups and represent themselves as just another member – or even an authority figure – within that community.
The same is true for Telegram or other messaging apps where people commonly gather in like-minded groups. In these spaces, the community itself has already done the work to compile victims for all the villains in the cryptoshadows. Communities are welcoming because that’s the point of community. By simply being in these groups, however, you’ve done part of the scammers research for them… they know that you are part of their target audience.
Make sure you customize your privacy settings in Telegram… or else you’re about to get a whole hornet’s nest of attention from all the wrong people!
Community messaging apps like Telegram and Discord are third-party platforms that are utilized by Gala, but these can have their own security issues that are simply beyond any community’s ability to control. The scammers thoroughly know the shortcomings of these apps, and can exploit them to attempt to scam thousands of members of a community within minutes. Even one success will show them this pond is well-stocked with easy catches for their future fishing endeavors.
Any community where the digital villains see opportunity isn’t going to get rid of them without a fight, however. We can only turn the tide against the scammers by making sure that each and every one of us is ready to defend against them.
Don’t forget to customize your exceptions as well! By default, any member of Telegram’s premium subscription can contact you regardless of your settings 😱
Don’t forget to customize your exceptions as well! By default, any member of Telegram’s premium subscription can contact you regardless of your settings! 😱
How Scammers Prey on Communities
It’s hard to build and feel community if you’re always suspicious of your neighbors. The scammers are counting on this, because that’s not how defenses work. When you perceive yourself as ‘among friends’ your defenses naturally go down. You want to be helpful – after all, that’s what building community is all about.
That’s why they’re here. Community is a group trust that we build up over time with likeminded people. We can’t simply turn it off and on. It’s not like we recognize every member of the community, we just recognize that they are part of the community.
We’ve discussed impersonation before, so you’re all very well aware that there are people out there who will pretend to be Gala customers or community support. You need to stay vigilant for these types of things… these apps are where the scammers find their marks.
This isn’t to say that community itself is bad. In fact, it’s very very good. Community standards and best practices are how we combat these scammers. Building a community is too important to let scammers stop us. We have to build a better community to make it outlast the villains.
Trust is Earned
Just because someone is part of your community does not mean they’ve earned trust, and it’s not an insult to tell them so. Caution is admirable… and part of the point of web3 is to establish systems that don’t rely on trust.
First off, please adjust your privacy settings on Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord or similar apps if you have not. In Telegram, for instance, you can be contacted by anyone by default. If you don’t change that it’s only a matter of time before you are getting blown up with spam and scams. Similarly WhatsApp will show your personal phone number to anyone who comes looking if you don’t change the security settings… make sure to get this done or you’re wide open to an attack from a crytpovillain.
Even on Discord you can customize your security settings to control who can reach out to you. As we’ve discussed before, don’t trust a display name… that can be easily changed. Put people you trust on your friends list. Consider changing your settings so friends can message you. That way any new friend requests are where you know you need to be vigilant, and anyone on your friends list has already been vetted.
Trust, but verify
-Old Russian proverb
Don’t trust these security measures to be the end all be all of your defenses, however! People can get hacked or lose access to their accounts. Sometimes the attack could come from someone you know… albeit not them actually sitting in front of their keyboard.
Community Strong
With so many threats among communities you trust, the fight against bad actors in digital spaces can seem hopeless. Fortunately, community is also the cure to this malady.
⬆️ Not a great way to seek help from the community. Not only does anyone watching now know this user’s needs, but also their urgency. I bet their DMs blew up.
⬅️This is a great way to utilize the knowledge of the community. Tons of eyes can get on the deceptive scam attempt right away to verify if it’s legitimate or not. HINT: This one was not legitimate.
No one person can be entirely vigilant all the time. We get tired. We get distracted. Our guard comes down for a moment here and there… and that’s when attacks happen. Talk to your community. Educate each other and call out the tactics that scammers are using so that everyone can learn to avoid them. Alone an attack is inevitable. Together we’re strong.
If you see something sus, reach out! Ask the community you trust whether you should be engaging. Don’t be embarrassed. A simple question could save you a lot of hassle.
Guarding Each Other
When we work together, the community really shows its strength. Those who seek to exploit communities of common interests in the web3 space are counting on us not following through with our commitment to a solid community. If a victim doesn’t use the community resources at their disposal to help themselves, what can a community do to help?
That’s why it’s so important to share tips and educate fellow community members about security culture. If we all get a little better at spotting bad actors, we’ll all be a little less likely to get scammed. If we all get a little better and share a little more of that culture with each other, we’ll be exponentially more protected from those who seek to do us harm.
That’ll do it for this week’s Guardian Papers, but we’ll be back! Next time, we’ll be breaking down multi-factor identification and how it can help protect your digital sovereignty in this new age.
Stay safe Galaxians… and always have your shield ready!
The wait is over—Ghosts of Ruin is here, and the sale is officially live on Gala Film! It’s time to step into the thrilling world of Neural Reality, where the stakes are high, the action is intense and every moment counts
Now, you can buy your Ghosts of RuinMoment Packs and unlock exclusive Moments from Episodes 1-4 of the series. The more viewers tune in to the series, the greater your POPCORN! rewards.
Moments are specially curated digital assets that capture key action sequences from Ghosts of Ruin. Each pack holds a unique Moment NFT, giving you a piece of the Ghosts of Ruin universe that you can own, trade and treasure.
Why Buy Now?
Exclusive Content: Secure your place in the Ghosts of Ruin experience with Moments that highlight the most thrilling parts of the series.
Ongoing Rewards: As more viewers dive into the world of Ghosts of Ruin, your Moments will generate increased rewards. The excitement of the series brings more attention—and potential surprises—to your collection.
Daily Distribution Allocation: 15% of the daily $FILM Allocation* is dedicated to Moment owners—that’s your chance to grab a piece of the pie! The rewards from your Moments apply across all four episodes, so every watch counts.
*In preparation for the launch of the $FILM token, rewards are currently distributed as POPCORN!, the placeholder token for $FILM rewards that will later be convertible to $FILM.
Boost Your Rewards by Collecting Scenes
Collect all the Moments within a Scene to watch your rewards grow! Your daily reward boost you depends on the collected Scene’s rarity:
10% for completing a Bronze Scene
20% for completing Silver Scene
30% for completing a Golden Scene
Go for the gold by collecting all the Moments in all available Scenes to trigger the ‘MAX BOOST’—a whopping 50% increase in your daily rewards!
How to Get Started
Purchase Your Moment Packs: Head over to Gala Film and purchase Ghosts of Ruin Moment Packs.
Reveal Your Moments: Open your Moment Packs to see which exclusive Moments you’ve unlocked. Each NFT Moment is a unique part of the Ghosts of Ruin story.
Maximize Your Rewards: Collect Moments to form Scenes and boost your daily rewards. The more you collect, the bigger the boost!
Exchanging GoR Early Collectible NFTs
The earliest supporters of Ghosts of Ruin collected four different levels of NFT items, each of which is now exchangeable for a number of Ghosts of Ruin Moment Packs. These are no longer available in any primary sale but can still sometimes be found on OpenSea’s secondary market:
To exchange your Ghosts of Ruin NFTs for Moment Packs, ensure that your NFTs are on GalaChain. If your NFTs are currently on the Ethereum blockchain, you must bridge them over to GalaChain in order to exchange.
Ghosts of Ruin is an immersive experience that rewards your engagement and passion. Start collecting your Moment Packs today, and let the adventure begin!
