Throughout 2024, I’ve been incredibly fortunate, having finally made one good move that balanced out quite a few of the countless terrible decisions I’d made up to that point, which has allowed me to join a number of communities that i had thought to be out of reach.

One of the communities that i kept an eye on throughout the bear market was Project Godjira. To be honest, it was one of those that i felt an innate attraction to without really understanding what was going on inside.

Although NFTs were still fairly out of favour in March ’24 (and arguably still are today, although there’s definitely been a sentiment shift on the timeline this week), I kept an eye on the floor as it hovered between 5eth and 9eth for a month or so, before finally deciding to take the next step and reach out to Shan, CEO of the PG Group.

I was incredibly touched to have him not only respond but take the time to spend 20 minutes on Telegram with me, chatting and getting to each other.

We got on immediately – and so I jumped in, picking up one of the 333 Genesis pieces.

To be honest, whilst I’ve made many blind purchases in the space, sometimes on gut, sometimes with a little info, sometimes just YOLOing in, as we all do, this interaction fully cemented my belief in the old adage that people buy people. Even in web3, where the unit of currency is something so intangible as a token worth nine decimal places of a penny, or a simple jpeg, the truth is that we’re all participants in a brand’s story – and the person delivering that story has the potential to dramatically enhance our level of engagement, or interest.

Since then, I’ve been delighted to have taken the plunge. The Godjira community is superb; whereas other communities are better known outside the space and indeed have more prominence within web3, I can honestly say that the access to people I’ve had through PG has been second to none.

So, as I sit here on the eve of the Project’s merge into JiraSan, bringing together multiple collections that have been launched to date into a single 10k collection (this evolution of the piece above is one of mine), I am blessed to have been given the opportunity to participate in angel & pre-sale funding rounds for various tokens, including the imminent Redacted coin itself – and of course, I’m now proud to be able to say that I’m working with Shan and the team, potentially helping with the myriad projects that will be coming to market through PG’s Y-combinator model.

Which just leaves the small matter of Token 2049 and the industry first Redacted flight next month.

Pictures will be taken.

Adventures will be had.

Friendships will be cemented.

And ultimately this all stems from the basic unit of human connection – a conversation, which Shan took the time to make happen.

Who knew that we were buying into people all along?