Jimi DevineAs the world of NFTs continues to explode in 2022 regardless of the ups and downs of the broader crypto market, Chris Dyer’s Galaktic Gang is a fun offering from a real artist.
The world of NFT is a little blurry at the moment. The Blockchain-backed non-fungible tokens have been around for a few years, but 2021 saw the rocket really takeoff. Some saw the crypto aspects as their latest get-rich-quick scheme, while others thought they were looking at the next generation of digital art and wanted to get in on the ground floor. Plenty of people on both sides of that fence were proven right in 2021.
In its best incarnations, you hear the ideas like creating digital provenance for things like the entire Christie’s catalog preventing counterfeits of a lot of the art worth the most money. On the other end, we have weird animal-themed pyramid schemes worthy of the 2016 CBD industry. There are so many Gorillas, you’d think half these people are Jane Goodall impersonators. 
But closer to the coolest end of the spectrum, you’ll find longtime psychedelic visionary artist Chris Dyer. Dyer is also, of course, a friend of cannabis. His rolling trays via Positive Creations are some of the coolest anywhere and not to mention he live-painted at Chalice in 2017. If you live painted at Chalice, you can basically just walk around giving out wook points the rest of your life and never run out, like Michael Jordan with sneakers. 
As for the psychedelic side, who am I to attempt to validate someone who paints a mural in Alex Grey’s backyard every year.
Dyer had been watching the NFT space a little bit, but one week in March of 2021 saw him start to put his foot on the gas.
“Five different people hit me up like, these are popping off, do projects with me, a lot of people are hitting me up to do a deal with them,” Dyer told L.A. Weekly. “But I wasn’t going to just jump into something just because there was money. I went to investigate first. I want to understand it better.”
Dyer had always been known for going all out with his positive creations, that’s even what he named his company that’s been around for nearly two decades. He wasn’t going to skimp on his first NFT offering just because the space was moving so fast in that moment.
To get his toes wet, he decided to start with a few high-end animations worthy of his first offering, just to further wrap his head around the whole process.
“And they worked well. And then when I moved to Denver on Halloween of last year, my company Positive Creations and this glassblower Kyle Morton were like, let’s do a series that’s 1000,” Dyer said.
This left him wondering, how does one actually do thousands of NFTs? Dyer learned not long after they could create an algorithm that randomized face parts. If they didn’t work well together? No problem. They could set filters that prevented components that didn’t fit well together from being paired up.
Dyer would spend weeks creating the pieces that would be used in the algorithm.
“So that was a very fun, beautiful concentration of drawing. I was drawing for weeks. And all these new creatures came out, The Galaktic Gang,” Dyer said. “And then we offered them as a series of 5555, which is a number I chose because of spiritual alignments. It’s about these creatures that are interdimensional beings from the fifth dimension who are here to guide us, humanity, through the process of ascension and self-realization, and finding our balance. So it’s the population of the earth, 8 billion people divided by 144,000.”
Dyer explained that the 144,000 number comes from various prophecies that argue that when you can get that many enlightened conscious beings, they will be able to turn the table and start influencing the rest of humanity to do their spiritual work and find balance first inside themselves and then for humanity itself.
The Galaktic Gang was minted last December after a month of drawing and coding. They’ve already achieved all the initial goals.
“We’re on the 2.0 road map with new goals that we have for the project, which are still underway because they’re more complicated. It has to do with improving our members and 3D airdrop assets, in-person events, online events, and planting trees in Hawaii.”
We asked Dyer what he would say to those people nervous about getting into the NFT space. The take of someone like Dyer that’s actually dedicated their life to art should be weighed more heavily in these kinds of conversations.
Dyer focused on the hopefulness of it all in his reply.
“It’s a place of openness, of observation and creativity because you’re creating it along with other people,” Dyer said. “There are no rules at this point. We can come up with new things that hadn’t been done before. And because it’s all based on technology, there are fewer limits.”
Dyer noted the Galaktic Gang’s other core members are Kyle Morton, Cory Ponz, Jason Turnquist, Travis Delly and Gabe Herrera.
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