The Legend of Satoshi Nakamato, FINAL STEP PUBLISHED.... 4.87 BTC GRAND PRIZE!

[itod]

...
I know for sure, that we can't use flames as indexes to tiles of board, because too many of them are on tiles borders (I hate those brush strokes! ) you simply can't decide which way to go.
...

What do you mean by "Use flames as indexes"? Can you describe by example?

[regisek]

Once again sorry for my English, maybe I used wrong word.

When you have classic chess board, you have letters and number which help you determine each tile (such as C2 for example). Now, I was thinking in this picture flames have the same function (group of flames from bottom and group of flames from left identify tile on board).

BUT NO.
2 reasons why not:

1) quality of painting - many times flame is right in the middle between two tiles and you can't tell where it should belong
2) and more important - groups of flame from top/bottom or left/right doesn't match each other when you look at row or column of chess board tiles. You know, in classic chess board you have for example letter D on top and bottom. Here you doesn't have the same group of flames.
So this is dead end

Still trying to decode flames

[regisek]

OK, I give up for now. I was trying flames length approach once again, but in some cases it's hard to determine is it long or short flame (I really hate right now the way this painting is painted ) And sometimes you don't know is it flame, or branch, should I count it or not

BUT another fact worth notice, maybe it will help someone (I'm too tired and my boss isn't happy too ) - notice that on the outside you have this weird colourless flames. Their number along with colourful flames is... 98 The same as inner flames! That could be something.
Notice also, that those weird colourless flames have one attribute - length. That could lead somewhere.

I give up right now, maybe some time later
Good luck everyone!

PS. I really wonder if the team behind this puzzle test it on someone outside their circle 

[Dharmah]

Is there any team still trying to solve this? I would like to join.

[bitcoinpeddler]

Alot of solo people trying to solve it not sure on any teams but if you wanna trade ideas feel free to msg me.
I was originally looking for the pattern 011010 Because I figured the key would give us are starting point.
I ended up finding one for the outer right starting from top to bottom (inside color) 011010000001   1110010000000001   01110110   111010101101001001   (switch to inside flames) 100000100110111101001011   111100110010001110011101010110000   110111(LEAVES)1110001   0111001011010100001111000100   Unfortunately I could get no useful info from this text also i would like to add that maybe we are dealing with a Caesarian Shift since the image title is 1flamen6 here is a useful link for that http://rumkin.com/tools/cipher/caesar.php

[Lotus777]

I have a solving Group going on Discord- Join in to help share some Ideas! https://discord.gg/jEhUQqX

[lemonparty]

In the interest of sparking some discussion/direction thought I'd share one of my early theories. Might help others eliminate solutions.

So to me its clear that the solution from the address is to do with a value (either raw or hashed with SHA-256) that exists in the flames. No big revelations. As mentioned its a vanity address so the private key will be random and wont conform to words/brain seed for priv key.

While there's a lot of noise going on in this image I feel some crucial elements get overlooked, so I try and find approaches that incorporate definite cues. One of these I feel are the meanders (squiggly Versace snakey corner thingys).

I looked at sequences and mapped the eight 'sides' (4 inner, 4 outter) paths and sought to use the meanders or glyphs in the corners of the painting as directional starting from corners. I did this going Clockwise and Counter-Clockwise for a total of 16 'walks' from a corner to a corner

The binary values I took were the characteristics of the flames one at a time eg looking at length where long is 1, and then its inverse for a total of 6 sets (Long 1/0, Short 1/0, Red 1/0, Yellow 1/0)

The meanders  are either CW and CCW and interestingly appears four times but for this I just tested moving CW + CCW and moving CCW + CW for a total of two rotations around the flame path but avoided trying four 'rotations'  because too much.

Given that the meander has 7 sides (of the eight, you'll notice the last inner side is missing ) I took this to be a hint that the missing side could be an indicator to exclude a side from the sequence. Or two. Or none.

So for each meander I test 0 excluded, 1 excluded and 2 sides excluded ie. the none, one or both the right sides of the chess board arent in the sequence for the meander rotation. I'd also twist the meander, changing the sides that are/might be excluded.

To visualise picture the two meanders on the middle of the board. One would be either CW and CCW in direction. I'd start them both so the missing side would exclude the right. Then change the second one to point upwards, then left, then bottom. After one rotation I would change the first meander from the right to the up excluding position and repeat the seconds movements again.

There were other rules I included when starting a path and coming across excluded paths such as dropping to the inner path or skipping but no dice. Anyway might spark a lil summin summin for someone out there.

A big PSA as well Vitalik Buterin's github has some useful tools that will come in handy for converting  this convertin priv keys > wif > address to verify. Google PyBitcoinTools.

If y'all hit the motherlode and this helped, here's my address:

1BZvt43p3qcv6jzJkg4bRsGGpLfX3DXnnM

[Dr.Lecter]

how do we know this hasn't been solved already?

someone manages to figure this out then realises the wallet is empty

we can check the balance from this:
https://blockchain.info/address/1FLAMEN6rq2BqMnkUmsJBqCGWdwgVKcegd
so, try to work hard.
the current rewards is $ 83,691.00. 

[peaceamongworlds]

I had this idea of a 12 word seed as key.

So I looked at the Sheakspeare poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45085/the-phoenix-and-the-turtle-56d2246f86c06

And tried to match words with the BIP39 wordlist: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt

But I got too many words making impossible to try all combinations.

[LowRyder_]

I had this idea of a 12 word seed as key.

So I looked at the Sheakspeare poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45085/the-phoenix-and-the-turtle-56d2246f86c06

And tried to match words with the BIP39 wordlist: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt

But I got too many words making impossible to try all combinations.

Code:

all
beauty
between
bird
can
come
distance
double
either
essence
flame
grace
grow
keep
love
loyal
music
mutual
name
near
neither
now
number
obey
one
property
reason
remain
repair
right
sad
same
save
session
shine
simple
sound
space
that
there
they
this
tragic
tree
true
trumpet
truth
turtle
two
what
wonder

Have a good day!

[Dharmah]

What is that BIP39 wordlist? Possible words for a 12 pass phrase?

[smracer]

I had this idea of a 12 word seed as key.

So I looked at the Sheakspeare poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45085/the-phoenix-and-the-turtle-56d2246f86c06

And tried to match words with the BIP39 wordlist: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt

But I got too many words making impossible to try all combinations.

1FLAMEN6rq2BqMnkUmsJBqCGWdwgVKcegd  is a vanity address.  Using a word list is impossible.

She got a random private key similar to this - 5KTVSQgC3Mx1hBWzFSADwYds4L31nbPSNPRQwE1F2GwDfdUjSZK

I found the vanity address 1FLAMEuWQftZ6moQvbAZo5aTqpPbeCrjZj  the above is the private key.

She then encrypted the key using BIP38 and got something similar to this.

6PRN5sGMbcMKzqP1ofE7t4CeMeKmxzSQ6MRfp6cPAGipe1HiF4L9Jf3E2p

This is what is hidden in the flames.  Find 6PR and you get the BTC.

It could be in binary in which case you are looking for this string 00110110 01010000 01010010

Hex is 36 50 52. I don't think it is encoded using hex though.

It could be an Base 64 matrix in which case it could be random.  You can't brute force that.


 

[Neantis]

What make you say she used BIP38 ?

[Dhaaaw]

Man i've been lurking in this thread for so long and it just bugged me that i didn't have any clue on where to start but if solving it is as hard as solving the previous coin artist puzzle then i'm out !
Here's a link on how the minecraft puzzle got solved : https://fr.scribd.com/document/359412332/Bitcoin-Puzzle

[bitcoinpeddler]

9 (000)short purple red    flames
9 (010)short green  red    flames
21(001)short purple yellow flames
21(011)short green  yellow flames
34(100)long  purple red    flames
26(110)long  green  red    flames
19(111)long  green  yellow flames
13(101)long  purple yellow flames

a little bit of what I was able to extract. maybe we should be focused on the small flames
I have tried brute forcing different combos of binary data to get any useful data but to no avail

I was looking at the key some more and 011010 is equal to 1A in hexadecimal. maybe that is where we should start on the "chess" board

[smracer]

9 (000)short purple red    flames
9 (010)short green  red    flames
21(001)short purple yellow flames
21(011)short green  yellow flames
34(100)long  purple red    flames
26(110)long  green  red    flames
19(111)long  green  yellow flames
13(101)long  purple yellow flames

a little bit of what I was able to extract. maybe we should be focused on the small flames
I have tried brute forcing different combos of binary data to get any useful data but to no avail

I was looking at the key some more and 011010 is equal to 1A in hexadecimal. maybe that is where we should start on the "chess" board

can't hide data in a repeating pattern.  There is a repeating pattern in the heights.

[CompNeuro]

Crazy and likely irrelevant tangents, but I've been diving into some math and topology to see if there's anything relevant.

The meanders at the corners can only be aligned if you map the 2D image to a non-orientable surface called a klein bottle

Klein bottles are one of the topological maps that a Game of Life game can take for it's map, along with a torus and some other topologies

John Horton Conway was involved in some great mathematical fields, having a type of notation used in knot theory named after him
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway_notation_(knot_theory)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knot_theory

The term Meander also has ties to mathematics, describing a non-self intersecting closed curve
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meander_(mathematics)

I've looked around a bit at meander notation and knot notation without success so far
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_knots

The chess game that has been previously mentioned (that matches the number of ivy leaves) was played against a man with the surname Morphy, by the way.

Also, if each leaf pointing to a chess square is associated with two characters, and each leaf pointing to a flame/lack of flame represents one character, we have enough characters to make a minikey. (29+ the S that is leading by default). Each square could have a different combo based on the board orientation, but some are excluded due to allowable characters in base58 notation. Still though, the permutation space is intractable unless we know the order to put the leaves in.

[itod]

I had this idea of a 12 word seed as key.

So I looked at the Sheakspeare poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45085/the-phoenix-and-the-turtle-56d2246f86c06

And tried to match words with the BIP39 wordlist: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt

But I got too many words making impossible to try all combinations.

1FLAMEN6rq2BqMnkUmsJBqCGWdwgVKcegd  is a vanity address.  Using a word list is impossible.

This can not be highlighted enough. Every third post is something where people try to solve this using words, not realizing there is 0% chance it can lead to solution. Author of the puzzle couldn't choose anything arbitrary because we have vanity address to start with, the private key is forced to the author and she had to paint it somehow in the picture.

She got a random private key similar to this - 5KTVSQgC3Mx1hBWzFSADwYds4L31nbPSNPRQwE1F2GwDfdUjSZK

I found the vanity address 1FLAMEuWQftZ6moQvbAZo5aTqpPbeCrjZj  the above is the private key.

She then encrypted the key using BIP38 and got something similar to this.

6PRN5sGMbcMKzqP1ofE7t4CeMeKmxzSQ6MRfp6cPAGipe1HiF4L9Jf3E2p

This is what is hidden in the flames.  Find 6PR and you get the BTC.

It could be in binary in which case you are looking for this string 00110110 01010000 01010010

Hex is 36 50 52. I don't think it is encoded using hex though.

It could be an Base 64 matrix in which case it could be random.  You can't brute force that.

I would disagree slightly with this. To illustrate I've generated one more vanity addresses that start with 1FLAME:

Code:

Address:              1FLAME9zvyZyE3kMXiTsFcuZNeC4gokabz
Private key (WIF):    5KNTFzU1JwH5dQvPWiRj3dXAoJ9tsSpZmZLaoJNwBfHXGw19g9A
Private key (hex):    CCBC2134B2B448250D1B08E77F5AF029F3AC2DEF0BDF253436950AA057216DE4
Private key (binary): 1100110010111100001000010011010010110010101101000100100000100101000011010001101100001000111001110111111101011010111100000010100111110011101011000010110111101111000010111101111100100101001101000011011010010101000010101010000001010111001000010110110111100100

I don't think that the author used private key in WIF format or BIP38 encoded WIF format. It would be easier for her to use private key in hex or binary format. All private keys in hex are 32 bytes long, meaning they have 64 hex digits [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F], or 256 binary digits [0,1].

If you ask me how she could have encoded these in the picture, maybe there is something in what Regisek hinted few posts above, she used the hex or binary digits as indexes to the chessboard, Regisek nicely noticed size of the chessboard on the picture is 7 x 9 fields, and 7+9=16, exactly as number of digits in hex encoded private key. I'll try to illustrate it like this:



How exactly can flames be used as indexes is anyone's guess.

[plen]

I do think the vanity of 1FLAMEN6 should not be ignored, she has always called it by that name, not 1FLAME, so just to reiterate "1 in 6" may be important.

[bachus]

I do think the vanity of 1FLAMEN6 should not be ignored, she has always called it by that name, not 1FLAME, so just to reiterate "1 in 6" may be important.

don't forget that all addresses must start with "1" (or "3"), so "1 in 6" might not be as important as "in 6" or "N6" or even "and 6".  but it probably points to the 6 red ribbons on the key.