Now the reason why I bring this up is because lately I’ve been feeling unproductive, I feel like I haven’t been outputting as much work as I’d like to. However I write this not only as a reminder to myself but to the artists at home beating themselves up because they feel like they’ve lost their momentum. 

EVERYTHING IS OKAY, THIS IS PART OF THE PROCESS. DO NOT STRESS, DO NOT WORRY, BUT INSTEAD MAKE THE MOST OF THIS TIME. 

From my experience creativity comes in waves, one minute you're overflowing with creativity and then suddenly you feel lost and unsure of where to take your next step. It’s easy to lose that momentum but It’s also a great time to reassess and take a moment to understand what you’re really trying to do with your work.

When faced with artists block you have two options:

1. TAKE ACTION: Persevere through the uncomfort. you're probably going to be unhappy with your work as you're piecing something together. But this is likely because you've become too outcome oriented and are worrying too much about the finished product. If you decide to take action just make something no matter how good or bad it is. You don’t have to even share it with the world and I’d actually suggest not sharing it with anyone. This is to just get you back in the rhythm of finishing what you start. 

2. ABSORB: Become a sponge and go discover something new. For example I’m typically an avid reader but over the past few months I was struggling to find something I could really sink my teeth into. That was until I picked up my first volume of Manga just under a week ago. I’ve now almost completed the entire Chainsaw Man series in the span of a few days and have stumbled into a world of excitement. Browsing the aisles of the bookstore now sparks that wonder and excitement needed to approach any type of creative work.

NOTE: YOU ARE NOT WASTING YOUR TIME - EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED

When I’m in the absorption phase I find it easy to feel like I’m wasting my time. I often think to myself I could be drawing or designing something instead of looking at someone else's work. However you need to understand everything is interconnected and listening to that album you just discovered or binging a new series you've fallen in love with is only adding fuel to your creative fire pit.

In this instance reading volume upon volume of Chainsaw Man isn’t just entertaining me but is giving me context to the world of Japanese storytelling. I’m unconsciously picking up on new art styles and storytelling techniques that I may or may not use down the line.

The aim of the absorption phase is to merely rediscover that feeling of joy and wonder again so much so that you feel the need to try bring that energy into your own work.

Good Luck

TEJI

Yesterday morning I asked my mum to take a few photos of me on my iPhone wearing one of the latest TEJI t-shirt designs. It was quite the full circle moment as the first time I used a camera was when I used to take photos for my mum when she used to resell vintage clothes on eBay, so it felt quite special having her now take photos of me in the clothes I’m trying to now sell.

After our DIY 15 minute photoshoot in my mums backyard I had a couple photos I thought were okay enough to share the shirt on Twitter with and hopefully bring in a few sales. I posted the shirt and told people it was a limited edition drop that was only going to be live for the next 24 hours.

Within 24 hours, I had made one sale. I was going to pretend the shirt sold out by just deactivating the shirt from my store, you know to create some of that scarcity the YouTube videos tell you your brand needs in order for it to be worth something, lol.

Prior to now all my clothing drops have been digital releases on the blockchain. At this point I’ve only sold seven units of one TEJI product, that being the STARSTRUCK PUFFER. However, this was the first actual sale made under the TEJI brand on an e-commerce site.

I’m not sure what I was expecting from this small release but I thought future me would appreciate documenting this minor failure. Seeing one sale was a rude awakening to the reality of the brand. While we’ve made minor progress in the NFT space there is still plenty of work to be done if I’m going to grow this brand into something thats able to penetrate the cultural zeitgeist.

It definitely hurt my ego seeing the one sale, since I’ve poured literally thousands of dollars into samples and releases half of which have never even released. However, one is still greater than none and I still have immense faith in what I’m doing and will continue to keep creating. This post marks technically the first ever sale of an item on tejitopia.com. I hope to be able to link this blog post to a future article one day when I laugh with myself about the times we’d make one sale in a day.

Huge shoutout and massive thank you to Carson for being one of my biggest supporters and advocates for the brand. It means more than you know.

Love, TEJI

Firstly, I’d like to apologize to the community for the lack of communication on my end. As you’re aware the Phunk Force 1 didn't immediately sell out and to be completely transparent with you all - my confidence did take a hit. However, it’s not in my nature to give up that easily. For the past several weeks my team and I have taken a step back to prepare a strategy that will ensure the project sells out so we may begin with the immediate production of the shoes.

To give you some insight, here is our plan of action:

- We have open sourced all the design and production files for the community which are now available on GitHub here.

- Allocated 10% of the V2 mint + all future royalties from the project to the CryptoPhunks treasury.

- Opened the mint to the ENTIRE CryptoPhunk and CryptoPunk ecosystems. Which means holders of CryptoPhunk v1s, v2, v3s and CryptoPunk v1s and v2s can mint the project at 0.1 ETH each.

- Prepared to launch our latest guerilla marketing campaign ‘1800-PHUNK’ which will go live next Friday.

From this point onward the Phunk Force 1 is no longer my project, but ours. This is the only shoe on the entire blockchain that has been built from the ground up for the community by the community. Each subsequent drop has flowed into one another and allowed for us to release an even greater product every time. I owe it to the community for getting us this close to creating the most fucking badass shoe that will ever exist on the blockchain.

The finish line is in sight. Let's do this.
I hope you're ready for next week.

-Phunk #1717

I needed a way to unwind to keep my mind from digging myself into a quarter life crisis and what better way to distract yourself than playing video games. I used to think playing these seemingly arbitrary games was a complete waste of time that could be better off spent towards hours in the real world. However, I decided to let go of all resistance and pick up my Nintendo Switch that hadn’t been touched in over two years. 

Now.. What game do I play? There’s too many options — usually the same thing happens when I try to watch Netflix and end up not wanting to watch anything at all at the thought of choosing the wrong show. But after watching a few ‘Top 10 Nintendo Switch games of all time’ videos on YouTube a certain game with an art style reminiscent of my informative years playing Pokémon on the DS had happened to stand out to me. This game was Stardew Valley and from what I gathered the game was a cross between Farm Simulator and Animal Crossing.

It was the exact world I wanted to venture into far away from this one. Ironically though I found myself completing the same mundane tasks as I would out here in the real world — I’d work, buy things, upgrade my stats, go on quests and get to know the NPCs. The only difference? I was enjoying it. There technically is no real aim to the game itself which is where I began drawing similarities to what it's like in our world. 

No one really knows why we're here and what we’re supposed to do and even I beat myself up at times for not having my ten-year plan figured out. But that’s not the point — you're supposed to be confused on how to complete the next quest, you're supposed to upgrade your character exactly how you want and customize your home with cool little trinkets you found on the other side of the map. It’s not that serious, it's just a game. This is why I think it’s so easy to enjoy any of these life simulator games because you can see tangible progress — you know how long you have until you level up or get the next upgrade. You set little goals for yourself even if they seem silly, like saving up for a rare limited edition cactus painting you can hang in your house. 

I’ve begun looking at the world around me as if it were a super advanced video game with nearly every feature and emotion imaginable. There are an infinite amount of ways to play the game and there’s no such thing as the right way. We all spawn in different locations with different tools and abilities but it's about learning to navigate the unknown. Each journey is relative to the player; what you find challenging might come easy to others and vice versa.

And yes, some people use cheat codes to skip levels and upgrade their in-game currency but one thing that I know is that GTA got pretty boring when I was able to buy anything in the game. I guess this is just my less-corny way to spin the journey, not the destination trope in a way that I can relate to. Not to mention but some of my most memorable and most rewarding experiences in-game have been playing multiplayer with my friends even if that meant talking absolute garbage for hours on end. To keep things short, the choice is yours and even if you don't max out your character don’t discount all the little things you did achieve — even the smallest things matter. 

Play the game.

-player137489920847

The CryptoPhunks x Louis Vuitton Duffle is a continuation of permisionless collaborations designed by TEJI. Similar to the previous CryptoPhunks x Nike Pirate Hoodie the duffle features my own personal CryptoPhunk #1717 combined with the Pirate Bay and flipped Louis Vuitton logo in an all-over monogram print.

There are only 50 Pirate Duffle NFTs available to mint. Each duffle costs Ξ 0.1 ($198.29) and will be redeemable for a physical edition of the duffle itself via a short claim window in the Official TEJIVERSE Discord.

NOTE: After minting your Pirate Duffle please verify your assets via Collab.Land in the TEJI WORLD Discord to gain access to claim channel.

edition://0xA3088D8a04071974b86f910A4058f077aC34D386?editionId=0

As a kid growing up in the early 2000s I couldn’t afford expensive software like Photoshop and Sony Vegas, so I pirated it. The Pirate Bay and FrostWire was my first encounter with peer-to-peer networks — at the time I just wanted learn how to make logos and edit videos for my YouTube channel, but I only now see the true significance of these platforms.

Not long ago, I purchased my first CryptoPhunk in what I call a statement against censorship and copyright — you can read more about my first encounter with copyright laws here. However, one of the reasons why I think the Phunk movement resonated so deeply with me was because I saw the entire community building shit regardless of if they had of permission or not. They flipped the imagery from a company proclaiming to be in favour of an open and decentralised web only to be struck down with a DMCA notice — practically blackballing and excluding the Phunks from the rest of the NFT community.

But this didn’t matter…

They kept building and even created their own NFT marketplace ‘Not Larva Labs’ with zero trading fees — which has now done over Ξ3,137 ($9M+) in trading volume.

They didn’t give a PHUCK, they JUST DID IT.

Pirate Hoodie

This brings me to the limited edition Pirate Hoodie designed by myself — created to pay homage to several of the internets most notorious players. The hoodie is the first official permissionless collaboration between the CryptoPhunks and Nike. The hoodie features my own personal CryptoPhunk #1717 emblazoned on the left side of the chest combined with the Pirate Bay, Frostwire and flipped Nike logos aswell as an excerpt from the Bitcoin Whitepaper.

There are only 25 Pirate Hoodie NFTs available to mint. Each hoodie costs Ξ 0.04 ($103.33) and will be redeemable for a physical edition of the hoodie itself via a short claim window in the Official TEJI WORLD Discord.

NOTE: After minting your Pirate Hoodie please verify your assets via Collab.Land in the TEJI WORLD Discord to gain access to claim channel.

edition://0x28D0a1D3125f9132Efa6C1c09Ab446b8c63f3dDf?editionId=0

We have liftoff!

After many sleepless nights I did it, I’d finally launched my first official NFT project, The Tejiverse. The launch had went extremely smoothly, with the public mint selling out within the first three minutes of going live. 

But wait why didn’t the project not instantly rocket to a 10 ETH floor?

Well anon.. it’s all apart of the plan and I’m actually stoked that we managed to pull off such a low-key launch. From the outset we knew we wanted to pursue an ‘anti-marketing’ marketing strategy specifically designed to deter speculators and invite genuine community interest. We declined all paid promotion and decided not to participate in corny engagement farming techniques that only builds artificial hype. What we did, however was provide a fair launch (inspired by the Treasure eco-system) accessible to newcomers entering the space — I even managed to onboard my own father who’s now become quite a cult icon in the in the discord server.

Our practically stealth launch far exceeded my expectations, within hours of going live we were already generating community content — i.e 3D derivatives, GIFs and memes.

What are the plans for The Tejiverse moving forward?

Moving forward, ensuring the brand and community is built on strong foundations is very important to me and the direction we wish to take The Tejiverse over the next decade. Our decision to delay the announcements of the future plans and direction of The Tejiverse was strategic in nature, to allow for the brand to take small, incremental, and measurable steps moving forward. We believe that this strategy will sustain the longevity of the project by building from the ground up on genuine ethos that have laid the foundation for long-term sustainable growth.

In the short term vision for the brand we plan on structuring the inner workings and roles within the community. We’ve already had several members reach out and offer to moderate the server, while we’ve had other members offer themselves up as advisors and strategists. We plan on putting on weekly and monthly events such as weekly twitter spaces, monthly cartoon marathons, community music playlists and many more fun unannounced plans, to ensure the community remains engaged — while at the same time working on building The official Tejiverse lore. While we do encourage community participation we also understand the community needs some direction which is why I the founder will ensure we as a community stay on track and continually hit the goals we set to make sure our long term vision can come to fruition.

Feel free to checkout The Tejiverse collection here: https://opensea.io/collection/tejiverse

If you don’t believe now, it’s probably best you look the other way.

-Teji

The Tejiverse is a fictional reality rooted in discovery inspired by my own experiences. In the so called ‘real world’ I’ve train-surfed, summited mountains, climbed volcanoes, jumped from 90ft cliffs, slept in caves, snuck into music festivals, explored train tunnels, war bunkers, drains.. the list goes on. Basically what I’m trying to say is I’m an Adventurer and now I’m embarking on a new quest — A digital adventure.

Who’s behind Teji?

My irl name is Jet Williams — I’m currently 21 years old and was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. The reason why I’ve decided to dox myself is because I believe in complete transparency when building a brand and community. Growing up in my early I teens I stumbled upon Sydney’s Urbex (Urban Exploration) scene — You see, I didn’t necessarily have a normal adolescence, I was never the one out partying, drinking or taking drugs. I was out exploring either above or below the City of Sydney.

The Outsider, The Alien, Teji

Growing up I always felt somewhat like an outsider — maybe because I was always changing schools and never managed to keep one of those friendship groups I could call my own, or maybe because of my bi-racial indigenous heritage which made me feel too white for the black kids and too black for the white kids. Either way I may or may not have subconsciously chosen this little blue alien like creature now known as Teji to represent me and my brand.

To me aliens represent the unknown — all the things we don’t know about ourselves and the world around us. I find something so beautiful about the process of discovery that’s gotten me hooked not necessarily on what you may find but on the process, the unravelling of the self. There’s so many people, places and things to discover that it at times can become very overwhelming. I have lots to say and share with the world but as I said it’s a process — This post is barely even scratching the surface of the stories I wish to tell and worlds I wish to build.

The Collection

The Tejiverse is a collection of 1000 alienated Tejis all living on an alternate timeline. There is no copyright, only fun. The entire Tejiverse ecosystem will forever exist in the public domain under a CC0 licence. The original 1000 NFTs will be a free mint on the Ethereum blockchain and will serve as a lifetime ticket to Teji’s World.

Now the reason why I’ve chosen to create such a small collection for free is because making money isn’t my priority. However, what I wish to do is foster a community of digital adventurers and explorers. I want to tell stories and encourage others to tell theirs.

If you are patient and appreciate the process I encourage you to join our community. However, if you are looking to flip and make a quick profit I strongly urge you to look elsewhere to invest your time and energy. As of now I’m in process of creating the official Teji lore and can’t wait to share with you what I have created. Till then, happy travels.

Love,

Teji

What’s the Inuarashi origin story?

INU: I started as a game developer developing MMORPGs before I had to put down programming and do some normal corporate stuff for a while. When COVID happened, I started finishing workdays super early and would get back into programming in my free time.

TEJI: That’s awesome I also grew up on MMORPGs — my favourite was Adventure Quest.

Where does the name Inuarashi come from?

INU: Well, I worked in a space were most developers remained anonymous and so Inuarashi is a character from One Piece, and I like One Piece so yeah.

What was the first game you got into?

INU: I used to be a huge MMO guy — way back I used to play Tibia and of course everyone went through their RuneScape and World of Warcraft phase. The experience playing these games really helped with programming MMORPGs.

TEJI: I wasn’t aware of your history in the MMORPG world which is funny because I’m starting to realise most people who played those games growing up have now all ended up in the same crypto circles.

When did you first discover Bitcoin?

INU: Not long after I started developing games I thought it’d be a good idea to maybe try own some Bitcoin, (it was around $200 at the time) so I decided I was going to either buy one Bitcoin or take $200 and put it into a cloud mining service. I don’t know what I was thinking at the time but I ended up choosing the cloud mining over an entire bitcoin — I ended up getting 0.01 BTC instead of the 1 BTC.. so that was about it for awhile, lol.

TEJI: Haha my first introduction to bitcoin was back when I was 14 when I’d browse The Silk Road in Math class, lol.

What was your first NFT?

INU: I bought a CryptoPunk as my first NFT at the local top for around 24.5 Ξ — right before Ethereum crashed from $4000 to $1000 in a matter of days, so I lost like 70% of my investment and couldn’t sell due to the lack of liquidity in the market. So, I just ended up locking it up in my hardware wallet and got out of NFTs for about a month and in that month, I started learning solidity because I was like fuck, I got to make my money back somehow I guess.

TEJI: Haha blessing in disguise — plus you got to keep your Punk! Big W in my books

What are some of the projects you’ve worked on in the NFT space?

INU: I worked a little bit on front-end stuff for CyberKongz, I’m the lead community dev at Anonymice, I made my first NFT project GitTrees and then I made Message to Martians. I also helped out with ZenApes, The Littles, Ether Orcs, CryptoHoots, EvoSnails and many more. But recently I’ve been working on much more complex contracts that help with gas optimisation.

TEJI: It seems like your becoming one of the goto devs in the space — can’t escape the Inu mouse, lol.

INU: Haha, one of the reasons why I became so well known in the space was I used to analyse smart contracts of upcoming projects and share my findings with the Kongz alpha discord (Wall Street Kongz) and then one day I stumbled upon the Anonymice contract — at the time around only 25% of the supply had been minted and when I saw the code I thought there must have been some very smart people behind the project so I shared it with the Kongz community and it literally minted out within minutes.

I saw the project, liked it very much, decided to make a staking interface for it in like 1–2 hours because I wanted to use it myself and thought other people would like it too and then I became one of the mouse devs.

What is the NFT Meta heading into 2022?

INU: There’s two — play to earn and digital licensing and obviously it’s going to become way more corporate, every single influencer and corporation is going to try make NFTs. The landscape will become harder for indie artists as mainstream artists like Snoop Dog, Drake, Lil Nas and Nicki Minaj enter the space.

There will also be a massive wealth transfer between low-income countries like India and some South-East Asian countries where people will no longer be oppressed by low-income jobs because of these magical play to earn games popping up that are paying more than jobs at 7/11 or McDonalds and it will be like a revolution — crypto is going to save low-income countries and increase these entire countries socioeconomic status. That’s 2022–2024 in my opinion and don’t think the derivatives are going to die anytime soon, lol. What Play to Earn games do you have your eye on? Ember Sword, It’s my biggest bull case. They’re trying to build an MMORPG like WoW or RuneScape on the blockchain unlike Axie which is quite casual for the time being. Also watch out for CyberKongz and what they’re releasing in their next phase. Oh and you can’t forget EtherOrcs and the insanity of what they’re doing! TEJI: I personally really like what the Critterz team are building with their P2E Minecraft server. INU: Ah yeah, Critterz is very interesting — it’s a very agile model. You see everyone’s trying to build this whole eco-system from the ground up while Critterz just comes along and says f**k your roadmap, f**k your four-year timeline we’re going to just use Minecraft and make play to earn tomorrow. TEJI: Bullish. What do you think Indie artists can do to stand out from the corporations entering the space? Right now, Indie artists have so much potential to make it in the space compared to anywhere else in the world, but I think the trends not going to last as more corporations enter the space with superior management and marketing, but that’s how the world runs eh? What advice for do you have for builders in the space? Don’t get ahead of yourself there’s so many geniuses in blockchain that you don’t know about that will exploit you to hell, be very careful. Don’t fork code — understand what each function does, if you have time start reading all the Open Zeppelin libraries You got to love it — If you don’t, you’re not going to go the extra mile TEJI: Awesome! Good luck with your upcoming projects, keep building sir. INU: Will do, thanks for having me on!

Teji is a reflection of myself — The word Teji is my “real” name spelt backwards with an added i — like iPod. 

History of Teji

Both the word Teji and the character now associated with it, both began as seperate entities. Originally, I called myself Teji Temple — I used to like the idea of having a two word name like Juice WRLD or Post Malone. Now the reason why I bring up Juice WRLD & Post Malone is because I was using the alias Teji Temple to anonymously release music online — probably because I was too afraid of attaching my real identity to my work. 

Now, along the same timeline as me releasing music under Teji Temple I began trying to build a Lyrical Lemonade clone in Australia called Chapter Begun. I used to shoot music videos, interviews and sneak into shows. During this time Lyrical Lemonade founder Cole Bennett would introduce his own character Lenny — This made me realise I wanted my own Lenny for whatever I was trying to build. 

Soon this rough looking alien bear character I’d scribbled would now become known as Teji and Teji was ready to see the world. So, I packed my bags and headed for Vietnam — I bought a motorbike and rode from Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi not only backpacking but spray painting my newly made character across the country — This would become Teji’s first official mark on the world.

The Vietnam trip ended with an impulsive flight to Tokyo where I visited Takashi Murakami’s Kaikai Kiki gallery where I met LA based artist T-Rex who’d been hosting an exhibition alongside Ian Connor and the Sickö brand— the entire Tokyo trip opened my eyes to what’s really possible.

Not long after arriving home from Tokyo would I dive into the world of NFTs. I recall my first NFT purchase being an NBA Top Shot moment — I didn’t think much of it at the time but almost seemingly overnight did my portfolio transform into 99% illiquid JPEGs. 

Teji meets the blockchain

From the beginning I wanted to mint my own character to the blockchain —  I didn’t want to use another brands image to define myself online, I wanted to use Teji to build my own brand and online identity. The first iteration of Teji was inspired by Pixel Vault’s Punks Comic which took the simple pixel art of several Crypto Punks and turned them into 16 fleshed out characters — hence my decision to create a barebones pixelated Teji which I could also use to develop a narrative around.

I am now gearing up to release a free to mint collection of 1000 unique Teji characters which will play a role in the Tejiverse — Now, I’m not going to promise any utility with holding any of my NFTs but what I do promise is an entry ticket to my world. 

Well, what does this so-called world of yours consist of? 

Well you’re just going to have to come along for the ride and see where Teji takes you..

Are you ready to trip?

The War Begins

Let me set the tone — It’s 2009 and I’ve just wrapped up editing my first ever YouTube video on Windows Movie Maker. I was so excited to share my creation with the world until I was struck with my first ever DMCA notice. My video had been taken down from YouTube and nine-year-old me was introduced to copyright laws for the first time.

Look, to be fair what I created was no more than a slideshow that played over the top of War by Sean Kingston — But nevertheless I was proud of what I’d created, it was a display of an early act of creativity from a kid who just wanted to make something for the fun of it — This kid wasn’t trying to make money or drive sales away from Sean Kingston, he was just trying to express himself.

My SoundCloud account is deleted

The year is 2016 and I’ve started gaining attention on my SoundCloud account — I’d been posting Nightcore remixes of popular songs, which in layman’s terms basically means I sped up the song in Virtual DJ and re-uploaded it under my name.

My first remix to “blow-up” in my eyes was my sped up version of Say It by Flume — The song garnered over 20,000 streams (WOAH SO MANY PLAYS! lol) and pushed me to try produce more of my dodgy DIY remixes in hopes of getting that next dopamine hit of having a song blow up. This pursuit for plays didn’t end well, my account ended up getting deleted because I received one too many strikes for abusing SoundClouds copyright rules. I really do miss that account and feel a deep sense of sorrow inside me when I reminisce on all the playlists and music I’ve lost.

Buying my first CryptoPhunk

I just paid Ξ1.248 (or around $4129.13 USD at the time of writing this post) for a CryptoPunk derivative called a CryptoPhunk. Now why would I do this? Stylistically, the only difference between a Punk and Phunk is the that fact that Phunks have been flipped to face the left side and thats about it, lol.

So you’re telling me you just spent $4000 for a bootleg NFT that the creators literally just flipped?

Uh.. Yes, that’s correct sir, but it actually goes much deeper than this, let me explain.

Punks vs Phunks

CryptoPunks were first created in 2017 by developers Matt Hall and John Watkinson — two avid crypto fanatics who believe that the blockchain “provides a layer of trust that removes the need for lawyers and middlemen.” Punks were first released to the public as a free claim and for months thousands of Punks sat unclaimed on the official Larva Labs website — Now we all know what happened to the value of these OG CryptoPunks right?

Well, not long after the demand began to skyrocket in 2021 for the pixelated avatars a twitter user by the name of @Philiptheintern would launch his derivative project called CryptoPhunks — Not long after both Matt and John would take legal action and pursue the team behind CryptoPhunks (I hope your starting to see how much this contradicts Larva Labs so called beliefs in a true open and decentralised web..)

Phunks would soon then be delisted from OpenSea after becoming the first project to receive a DMCA takedown from Larva Labs. The developers behind CryptoPhunks would soon abandon the project, unwilling to counter the DMCA. The founders actually wrote a letter declaring their withdrawal from the project which can be found here.

But this was only the beginning you see..

Shortly after the CryptoPhunks team resigned a group of OG Phunks holders would emerge from the ashes and build their own royalty free marketplace called NotLarvaLabs. The marketplace has now done over $50m+ in total volume and has a top sale of 100Ξ ($300K+) for an individual Phunk.

Why I purchased my Phunk

You see, I and many others have been fighting centralisation for years now whether we’ve known it or not. You probably didn’t know that Ethereum was first conceived because its founder Vitalik Buterin had his character nerfed in World of Warcraft — Which is what made him realise “what horrors centralised services can bring.”

To me, my Phunk purchase is less of an investment and more of a statement — It encapsulates the transitionary period we find ourselves in between Web2 and Web3. The Phunk is everything Web3 prides itself on and I believe is ironically even more Punk than the original Punks. The Phunk is a big Fuck You to centralisation and I love it — Not to mention it but my Phunk is actually a Pirate which seems quite fitting.

Here’s our chance!

Not until recently have open-source and CC0 projects been a viable option for creators and builders online. Pioneers in the space like NotLarvaLabs, NounsDAO, CrypToadz, Github etc. are all beginning to pave the way for the open and decentralised web that Satoshi Nakamoto originally envisioned in 2009 and I can’t wait.

Be Phree my Phreinds, Love Teji

What’s in my bag? Growing up I was always fascinated with those little what's in my bag videos on YouTube. I thought it was so cool being able to see the items and objects that help make up peoples lives. Theres just something so satisfying about knolling (s/o Tom Sachs for introducing me to the term)

Anyways, I'm headed to New York in a few days so what better time than now to write up my own little what's in my bag post.

So here goes..

Backpack I've been using the same Patagonia 32L blackhole backpack on all my adventures over the past few years and its held up great! especially considering the amount of abuse I have put mine through, lol. If ever you see me IRL with the bag you will probably notice I'm normally hanging a Nalgene water-bottle from a carabiner because I get thirsty, like REALLY THIRSTY. Anyway the bag is A+, expect nothing less from Patagonia tbh, one of my favourite brands.

Shoes Fun fact about me - I hate shoes. You see, I'd prefer to wonder the earth bare foot but there are occasions when some protection is needed. Normally my shoe of choice is the all-black Birkenstock Eva (They tend to not stink like normal Birks because they're actually made of plastic which means they can get wet.) Some days I even opt for the triple-black Croc, but as of now I'm rocking the Teva sandals - I'm still only about a week into breaking them in but they have held up well and just well may become my daily driver.

iPad Pro The iPad Pro is one of the newer additions to my collection of essentials - I mostly just use it for Pro Create and YouTube. I've had iPads before but not until now have I actually began incorporating it into my design process and workflow - The Apple Pencil is undefeated. One benefit of taking a more digital approach to my process is the fact that I now don't waste stacks of A4 pages sketching out the same logo 100 times.

Macbook Pro My laptop is quite barebones as I really only use it for a few essential applications. Right now I predominately just use Ledger live to sign transactions and trade crypto - I also use it a-lot for writing and editing videos, but the keyboard sucks. I think I might pickup the new 14 inch model with the M1 chip solely because they brought back the OG keyboard and removed that shitty touch-bar.

Cameras For well over a decade now I've been an avid photographer and filmmaker. Over the years I've refined my gear and realised I hate bulky SLR setups - All my video work now is literally shot all on my iPhone and GoPro. I have come to care less about quality and more about accessibility. I've always believed the best camera is the one you have on you and if your discouraged to shoot because it's a hassle to unload your kit - you probably need to rethink your setup.

My holy grail of cameras is the Contax T2 - I had always wanted one and managed to scoop mine up on eBay for quite a reasonable price back in 2017. The 2.8 lens on this camera is superb and it's unlike anything I've shot on before - All the photos just seem to turn out magical. I have large archive of images taken on the camera I will probably begin to share with the world when the time is right.

Books I love to read and it's become a huge part of my lifestyle. I'm always destroying my paperbacks - breaking in the spine, highlighting 90% of the book and scribbling in the margins, you get the jist. But not until 2021 was the Kindle introduced into my life - I had always been opposed going digital when it came to my reading habits because I always told my self there was no way a kindle could compete with my paperbacks. I was wrong - I realised I could download literally 90% of the books I'd been wanting to read for free from Gutenberg.org, This really was a game changer because it even opened the doors to self published PDFs that I previously steered clear from. I haven't forgotten about my paperbacks though and still hop between both digital and physical depending on subject matter.

Notebook My moleskin contains all my secrets and all my ideas - I even have a 1 Ξ reward for anyone who finds and returns my notebook. I normally just use it jot down or sketch any ideas when it comes to the Tejiverse. I'd like to say more on this subject, but I've already said too much.

Miscellaneous Some of the other items in my bag which are essential but don't necessarily deserve a paragraph include:

• Passport

• Lacie 2tb Hardrive

• Pens & Markers

• Teji Stickers

• Ledger Nano S

• Tom Ford glasses

• Portra 400

• Yubikey

• Wallet

And that covers just about everything - I hope this has given you some kind of peak into my world and has maybe inspired you to take a look at some of the items that help make up your world.

Love, Teji

• Homebrew

• Git

• Xcode

• Python3

• Pipenv

• Pycharm

Figuring out how to run lines of code in terminal was a breeze. Getting Homebrew to install took a couple goes but we got there in the end. I'm still unsure of what Pipenv does but a YouTuber said he prefers it over Virtualenv and Conda so I just followed his lead.

Now.. funnily enough installing Xcode brought back some memories I almost completely forgot. So, back around maybe 2012-2013 I was an avid mobile gamer and one game I was obsessed with was actually Subway Surfers, now the reason I bring up Xcode is because I now remember using Xcode to hack into the game so I could unlock different boards, characters and score multipliers.

Now, if we are on the subject of hacking let me talk a bit more about some of my early "hacking" days. You see I was always that kid with a jailbroken phone. I'd figured out how to encrypt my phone so well that if anyone tried to breach my security a picture was taken from the front facing camera of their little conniving face.. hehe

One time when I was fourteen I was actually arrested (when I used to sneak into train tunnels) and had my phone seized. One of the police officers ended up calling my mother proclaiming 'Your kid has locks on everything, we tried getting a specialist in but we still couldn't get in.' Long story short I ended up getting that phone back along with a dozen photos of some crusty old police officers.

Now, did anyone ever play Modern Warfare 2? Yeah, because I did and I was addicted. I was one of those trickshotter kids and was in a new clan every week. I had learnt how to download and use a cracked copy of photoshop from Pirate Bay and began designing logos for clans, this is also where I started diving into video editing. I also learnt how to install mod menus so I could get whatever prestige I wanted.

Ha, I also remember when I was first introduced to the Action Replay card for the Nintendo DS. I thought it was the coolest thing being able to hack my Pokemon game so I could walk through walls. I don't think I actually ever owned a copy of my own action replay card but my Dad did get me an R4 chip that let me install any game I wanted for free AND it helped me catch Shaymin!

I think my Dad is actually the one who introduced me to the world of hacking and he didn't even know it at the time - we just couldn't afford to be buying all these new games.

My Dad was actually quite the pirate back in the day, the man would literally rip hundreds of copies of movies from Limewire and burn them to CDs. He pirated so many movies that he received a formal Anti-Piracy warning from some big media conglomerate which I won't disclose.

I could easily go on about my early hacking days and maybe even some of the stories from the back end of my adolescents where I discovered the world of social engineering and how I would somehow get my hands on AAA passes to any and every music festival with a couple magic words and emails. But that's enough for today's post, my Mum is about to drop off some lemonade and cinnamon scrolls, I gtg.

Cya, Teji

Tumblr is where I had my first experience playing with HTML and CSS code, at the time I had no idea how significant these two programming languages were to the Internet. You see, I was just a kid trying to get Yonkers by Tyler the Creator to automatically play on my blog.

Now, almost five years later in 2016 I was shipped off to boarding school. I now had the choice of choosing two electives. I remember I picked art and photography but fortunately for me the photography class was full so I was slotted straight into the IST class with the weirdos. Our teacher introduced the class to Python.. well tried to at-least. You see, no one in that class really payed attention, or wait maybe that was just me. I think I was too busy binge watching Casey Neistat vlogs (this was Caseys golden era tbh) Regardless, I managed to learn a few things that year and built some super simple programs that I remember nothing from, lol.

I dropped the subject the next year. I hated it.

Fast-forward it’s 2021 and I’ve finally jumped into NFTs. I had known about the polarising phrase for a minute now and no it was actually before Gary Vee started jamming the phrase down peoples throats. The first NFT I ever owned was some NBA TopShot card worth probably nothing now. I soon dove deeper and deeper and began learning more and more about the blockchain. I learnt the difference between on-chain and off-chain data (s/o Anonymice! love you guys) I joined several DAOs, Started my own Axie Guild and now employee several scholars in the Phillipines and have met so many wonderful friends along the way.

This blog thingy or whatever you want to call is my next step in this weird world of web3 and programming. I plan on using this as an outlet to document my learnings and hopefully encourage anyone else in a similar position to myself to jump into this world.

I’m still new to this whole programming thing but my main focuses will be:

1. Solidity

2. HTML

3. CSS

4. Js

5. Python

I do plan on learning C#, Java and PHP but for now these are my main priorities. One goal I wish to have completed before the conclusion of 2022 is to release my own on-chain NFT project to accompany 7265646163746564

Feel free to follow me on Twitter here @0xTeji to stay up to date on my web dev journey!

I’m so excited to be here, I can’t wait to build some cool shit and even better make some even cooler friends.

Love, Teji

(not sure if people close blog posts like they are letters but oh well you get the sentiment)