Technology connected us to everyone — and somehow, we got lonelier. PIF12 is my experiment in using onchain blessings to bring the people I admire into one circle, across twelve years.
See What I'm Building | 佩福12年What is Omamori?
PIF12 (short for Pay it Forward 12) is a twelve-year community experiment by Jason Lai — one Soulbound Token (SBT) minted on Base each year, given to people I admire and friends willing to walk together across a full zodiac cycle.
For years, I've kept a quiet ritual — sending blessings to people I care about around Lunar New Year. PIF12 brings that ritual onchain. The form is inspired by Japan's omamori (御守) — small temple charms holding a hand-written wish. PIF12 isn't religious; it just borrows the spirit of the gesture — something small, deliberate, and yours. Each year I mint one as a Soulbound Token, given to those willing to walk this twelve-year journey with me. You can't buy it. You can't transfer it. Its only value is that you actually came.
Why 12 Years?
Horse to Snake. Twelve years completes one cycle in East Asian cosmology — a closing, and a return.
Research suggests deep trust takes 7–10 years of shared experience. Twelve years gives strangers enough time to become a community.
Has technology made us lonelier? If we use the same technology to build real connection — what happens after twelve years? This is the question I want to answer.
About the Founder
Just a homo sapiens who likes projects that pull double duty.
PIF12 is the first thing I've fully committed to building.
Also known as 佩福12年 in Chinese — a 12-year commitment of my blessings, onchain, for people I admire.
What stays, when people leave?
Their blessings — kept onchain.
What can one homo sapiens build, with AI and no funding?
That's the experiment.
What is blockchain for, if not just institutions?
A playground. Ours.
Build the playground — and all three answers arrive at once.
The algorithms aren't going anywhere. I'm turning their magic against the loneliness they brought — and inviting you in.
How It Works
A new Omamori design mints on Base each year. Year One: Horse.
Thanks to Privy, no seed phrase needed. No gas fees, for now. Sign in with email, claim with one click.
At least one in-person gathering each year. Different city each time. Real faces, real trust.
I'm hoping you're the kind of "weird" that actually likes helping — where help means what they need, not what you want to give.
Every act of kindness is a star,
Together, we are drawing a constellation that will light up the dark.
Get Involved
FAQ
PIF12 (Pay it Forward 12) is a twelve-year community experiment by Jason Lai. Each year, one Soulbound Token (SBT) is minted on the Base blockchain and given to a person Jason admires or shares values with. The tokens cannot be bought, sold, or transferred — their only value is that you actually showed up.
The concept of Soulbound Tokens (SBT) originates from Vitalik Buterin's paper. PIF12 currently uses the ERC-1155 format, with a smart-contract non-transferability constraint binding tokens to wallet addresses chosen by the holder. The reason for the non-transferable design: having watched several crypto bull-bear cycles and NFT hype-pump-dump rounds, I want PIF12's SBTs to stay community-oriented — keeping room for game-like interactions, proposal mechanisms, and whatever future shape this community wants to grow into.
By default, Jason serves as admin: after verifying your identity, he can help recover a lost or compromised SBT. We're not pursuing absolute decentralization at this experimental stage — it's neither realistic nor practical right now; that may evolve later. If you prefer a different setup, two alternatives are available: (1) Lone-wolf mode — remove Jason's admin permissions entirely and self-custody your SBT, full risk on you, fully aligned with web3 principles; (2) Social-recovery mode — designate two guardian angels who can help recover your SBT if your wallet is hacked or your private key is lost. These three modes are scheduled to ship with the 6/21 mainnet launch; details may still adjust.
PIF12 SBTs cannot be purchased or traded. Recipients are people Jason admires — those who think across disciplines and like to build through hands-on experimentation, typically friends both old and new who embrace both technology and humanities, alongside companions who genuinely help others. The intent is to weave an organic community that resists tech-driven loneliness.
PIF12 is Jason's reaction to the AI era. As AI makes it easier to operate without human cooperation, PIF12 is a deliberate experiment in the opposite direction — using blockchain to build a slow, durable, human-centered circle of trust across twelve years.
It's hard to predict twelve years out — twelve years ago (2014), Ethereum hadn't even launched yet. That uncertainty is part of what makes this experiment interesting and beautiful. Technically, the most certain thing is: as long as nothing happens to me, the SBTs will live onchain for the full twelve years and beyond — though forks or chain migrations remain possible.
By then, crypto adoption should be much wider — comparable to how 2007–2019 took us from the Nokia 3310 to a smartphone in every pocket. Blockchain's affordances should be everywhere yet invisible in daily use. After PIF12 completes, the hope is to evolve into Republic Labs — Republic from res publica (the public's matter), a self-sustaining community holding the public space and giving members a sense of belonging; Labs encourages experimentation, where members can launch their own small experiments. Maybe by then countless new PIF12s will appear — a constellation of small experiments lighting up.