As you might remember, a couple of weeks ago I posted a screenshot of some text hidden in the Bytecoin's blockchain (with a string from Cyphernomicon):
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=512747.msg6747877#msg6747877Looks like I've found something extremely interestingI had to do bit of a work...
As there was no way to check what else might be hidden there, I was thinking about the way to extract each and every line of the BCN blockchain, just like Minergate does with all the information:
https://minergate.com/blockchain/bcn/blocksI noticed that Minergate shows "Extra raw" field for each of the transactions and also shows "(decoded)" string below it. See a random transaction:
https://minergate.com/blockchain/bcn/transaction/ae9ec912d41fd09ee68f5826ad09e21541187c642076102ad23be43b05e7b7d4After some random clicking there was no evidence of any particular text hidden in the extra raw of the transactions. Anyway, I decided that it was worth giving a try. I asked a friend to help me extract the extra raw field of the transaction from Bytecoin's JSON RPC API. However, unlike at Minergate it was just a sequence of bytes (like on bcn.cryptostats.org). After some time I finally had a data base of block height and corresponding coinbase transaction's extra raw field. For the random transaction above this would be:
1,213,10,38,131,69,119,9,5,143,42,153,164,83,195,154,214,32,111,120,59,175,243,61,4,88,204,214,174,89,207,227,119,2,8,0,0,0,0,152,227,28,82,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
After some experiments I understood how Minergate decoded it. They transform the bytes to hex, leaving a 0 before any number below 15. The first part of the line corresponds with the "One-time public key" (as appears on Minergate) with the prefix of "01", while the second part of the extra raw always starts with "02" (kind of JSON I guess). The one-time key is fixed in length, so I could easily delete it and proceed to the second part of extra raw.
This one was very easy to tackle: I just treated the bytes as standard ASCII codes (from 32 to 127) and cut out all the irrelevant strings shorter than 9 chars (there was a lot of litter in the blockchain). And that is how I managed to solve the whole puzzle! Applying this filter to the data base I arrived at
a lot of various text. What's more, I was finally able to look for these text lines at exact blocks at Minergate
See the Excel file I came up with:
https://mega.co.nz/#!KJ0ERAJI!2JaN-Awuhx0Kl70uFvRTN5UDpRPStnzbO2gSn7bdLnwThe results:1) The full text of Cyphernomicon is inside Bytecoin's blockchain. See sheet one, which contains all the extracted extras. Cyphernomicon blocks appear quite randomly.
I should remind you that a coinbase transaction is created when somebody mines a new block. Therefore, someone has posted (and I assume is still posting) the Cyphernomicon when he manages to find a block. Miners' competition explains perfectly why Cyphernomicon appears episodically, but consistently. It should be one of the older miners who posts it as his sign. Cyphernomicon starts at block 26185 (see Minergate as a proof) on August 11, 2012:
https://minergate.com/blockchain/bcn/transaction/de269e7bf407e5f480112cd08d46bb5b932523f60e7d4fe81a023b72ae00266d2) The miner posting Cyphernomicon is likely to have mined at least 17,000 of blocks out of 400,000 blocks I've checked. That adds up to at least 4.25% of all BCN mined to be concentrated in someone's hands. As those blocks appeared quite early on the emission curve, I assess that this may well be up to 10% of the total supply.
3) I also noticed shorter phrases, which stood out of the Cyphernomicon strings (which were generally 90-100 chars long). I filtered out those long strings and manually rechecked the rest 175 phrases at Minergate (see sheet 2). I'm not sure if I hadn't skipped anything else. And here's some more info:
4) I found a couple of links:
https://twitter.com/unSYSTEM2013/status/243726820984369153http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/pay-another-way-bitcoinhttp://blog.archive.org/2013/02/21/employees-to-be-paid-in-bitcoin-please-donatehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21916102http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4332698/dwolla-payments-mtgox-halted-by-homeland-security-seizure-warranthttp://reut.rs/1cFCyRDhttp://www.cnbc.com/id/101230884All of the links appear in the blockchain with the timestamps older than the original articles, sometimes just by half a day. I think this timespan points to some other miner who was inspired by the article he had just read so much that he posted it into the blockchain.
5) There are also quotes from other authors:
- A quote from Neuromancer (by William Gibson) appears at least six times:
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
- Victor Marie Hugo
- Dante Alighieri
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Galileo Galilei
There might be also some other German and English quotes, but as they appear not longer than 1-2 words, it is impossible to identify them. I assume I filtered out much more quotes, but I had to deal with the Cyphernomicon spam. If someone wants to recheck it, you are free to do it at sheet 1.
6) There is a strange riddle, which looks like a poem but is not googlable:
There is encrypted manuscript
The story of some doctors fame
And the community of brave
Will let you read almost the same
So when you'll move your step backwards
Right to the youth of arts
Compare time with linked blocks
That's where solution starts!
The other part of hidden key
Is right between the night and day
Illusion, virgin and bright brains
Will help you to increase your gains
6+((K)1 2 14)(2 6 5)(3 7 18)(4 4 16)+5 //not sure if this is related to the rest of the poem
And if you find it on the map
You're ready for another step
The third - the last. And it's the name
Of person you should give your key
To find it - follow little rabbit
On land you've recently inhabit
7) And finally I found about 100 different coordinates from all over the world (see 3rd sheet of the file). There are a lot of universities there but also some random houses, which I couldn't identify. I found at least 31 Universities on the list, while 70 more coordinates remain unknown (I’ve put the places next to the coordinates). Could it be the Universities engaged in CryptoNote development? Could it be meetup points? Or is it just some other miner's signature?
TL;DRThe majority of blockchain extra
https://mega.co.nz/#!KJ0ERAJI!2JaN-Awuhx0Kl70uFvRTN5UDpRPStnzbO2gSn7bdLnw1. I managed to extract almost all extra raw fields of coinbase transactions, which contained encoded messages.
2. Some old miner have been posting full Cyphernomicon text starting from August 2012.
3. Cyphernomicon text points to at least one large holder with 4-10% of all BCN supply.
4. There are article links posted by some other miner (in each case a day later than they were published).
5. There are a lot of quotes from various authors.
6. There is an ungooglable riddle (which might have been created by the Bytecoin developers or some other party)
7. There are more than 100 coordinates, at least 31 of which are Universities. The coordinates should be studied more thoroughly.
Disclaimer:This shouldn't be treated as a full blockchain summary. There are some limitations:
1) Only coinbase transactions of first 400k blocks were studied
2) Sticking to ASCII codes from 32 to 127 might have erased blocks on non-latin languages
3) The filter skipped all the strings shorter than 9 chars
4) The second sheet filter skipped all the strings longer than 90 chars (to avoid Cyphernomicon)
However, I guess this is a good start.
