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

[YuTü.Co.in]

Hi ytcoinartist, I'm from the Pineapple Fund. I can't PM you, so I'm writing publicly. Hope you come across this!

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Hello ytcoinartist!

I'm Pine from the Pineapple Fund, the largest cryptocurrency philanthropy project donating ~5000 BTC. The recent media articles reminded me of your puzzle that I came across years ago, and I'm curious if you'd be interested in a collaboration!

I'm sorry to see all the negativity and FUD on bitcointalk in regards to the puzzle, by the way.

For the remaining 100 BTC of the Pineapple Fund, I would like to leave it up to the community to choose which registered charities receive it. I was thinking of making a reddit post, but that is prone to being gamed.

A puzzle artwork could be created where a number of tokens are hidden in the image. 50 BTC of the last 100 BTC could be dedicated to the puzzle, and each token could say allow you to choose where 10 BTC goes. (It'll have to be a registered charity).

Alternatively, there could just be X different private keys of 1 BTC hidden inside, and who can solve the puzzles would be able to have a reward for themselves. It'd be an answer to all the people sending begging emails to the Pineapple Fund.

Let me know if you are interested in working on a collaboration! My email is contact@pineapplefund.org

Hey, Pine, you and others may not know this but it was I who founded the first ever crypto charity - Bitcoin 100 (now defunct) - where not a single satoshi was misappropriated nor any of its volunteers paid, again, a single satoshi for the literally thousands of hours put in over the course of its existence, not to mention our own moneys put in as donations and keeping the site running. Not bragging, per se, but do like your site. The Water Project did receive donations from us. I like that one.

Apologies for the aside, all.

Bruno

PS: This site is still running slow on my end, but much improved since earlier.

[chubbychew]

In the case of the puzzle, the input bits consisted of the six-bit cipher derived from the ribbons on the key paired with each of the 6-bit chunks from the 608-bit string encoded in the flames. After the XOR operation was applied to the entire string, the new string was then divided into 4-bit chunks, each of which represented a single flame in the photo.

Each bit in the 4-bit chunks represented a characteristic of the flame and each characteristic group could be represented as a bit: short (0) or tall (1) / red (0) or yellow (1) border /narrow (0) or wide (1) / purple (0) or green (1) interior—in that order. So, for example, a 4-bit chunk with the value 0110 would be a short (0), yellow border (1), wide (1), purple interior (0) flame in the painting.

Turned out we had absolutely all elements figured out ages ago. Amazing how no one stumbled on correct reading order.

Excuse me, why is it in that exact order? the beginning is because the rabbit looks at that side, right?
It would be great for someone to do a step by step with images haha PS: The best puzzle.

Hindsight is 20/20 but before the solution was posted, I had a feeling I had found "the primer" which was hidden in some of the leaves. Here is what I found, I shared some of it on this forum previously. The ampersand seems to say "small orange flames & leaves". There is a left pointing, up pointing and down pointing leaf attached to the ampersand. The left hand side border has those same three leaves with the small orange flames touching them. The left pointing leaf at the top has 1 orange flame touching it, the up pointing leaf has 2 white/orange flames touching it and the third downpointing leaf has 3 orange flames touching it, 1,2,3... If you look at what they are pointing at, it makes more sense when seeing that those three leaves are paired with the other three leaves which go off the border of the chess board.
1) The first leaf pair is pointing at height. The one on the left is pointing to "tall" the one on the top row is pointing to "short" (if it was pointing to a colored flame this might have been ambiguous).
2) The second leaf pair is pointing to outer color. The one on the left is pointing to a tall yellow purple (fat) flame, and the one on the top row is pointing to a short orange purple (fat) flame. Since height is already taken care of, the only difference is outer color
3) The third leaf pair is pointing to inner thickness. The one on the left is pointing to a tall orange green skinny flame and the one on the right is *touching a tall orange green (fat) flame. The difference is the inner thickness.

I had used this ordering a ton (1 height 2 outer color 3 thickness) but much to my chagrin, I was only looking at three channels at a time forgetting that obviously the ordering of the first three channels implies the fourth. I probably wouldn't have caught the true solution though because I foolishly was not checking multiple interpretations of channel values (red = 1 yellow =0 OR red=0 yellow=1). But there's my thoughts on it. I'd love to know if this was indeed intentional as I believed.

[regisek]

First off, thanks to CoinArtist and Rob Myers. I had lots of fun and met many new friends! I will enjoy your future work.
(...)

• 1FLAMEN6 - means nothing
• Phoenix, dove, knight, queen - nothing
• Chess board - nothing
• Leaves - NOTHING!
• Weird flames - nothing
• Mirrored bits - nothing
• Tweets from coinartist - nothing
• Spirals - mostly nothing (small indication of order)
• Poem by coinartist - nothing
• Blue squares - nothing
• Flames on chess board - nothing
• Phoenix spikes - nothing
• Dove tail - nothing
• Weird queen bottom - nothing
• Melting queen - nothing

Overall I'm a little disappointed in the solution. It appears there was no trail of clues or anything to lead you to the answer. You simply had to guess at how to decode it. Looking at the number of combinations to find the correct solution, assuming you knew that the puzzle was created like this: flame_split(xor(WIF+string,011010)) and making no assumptions about the path, direction, value of flames, or order of the flame bits, you get this:

• Order of bits - 4!
• Flame 1/0 value =  2*2*2*2
• Order of segments - 8!
• Direction of segments 2^8

Combinations: 3,963,617,280

And that's if you KNOW the solution method but make no other assumptions. It's not very surprising why it took 3 years to solve. Add the part where you don't know the actual solution, all the red herring clues and thousands of possible methods to encode a private key. That turns the number of combinations well into trillions. Without legitimate clues leading to the solution it seems kind of arbitrary.

Oh well, onto the next thing. Looks like everyone is working on neon district?

Thank you for that summary, I feel the same after reading solution. And all those red herrings!!! So big troll! And how you can tell what is fat, what is skinny? Honestly, like I said before - idea was good but implementation not so. And I think it was meant no to be solve.
Also: answer to your question - after reading this, I gave up on Neon District. If the ytcoin artist created this it is not my type of puzzles. I love labirynths going from clue A to B and her puzzles seems to involve luck and brute force. No thank you.
I also learned that internet is full of trolls and you can't trust anyone except yourself. This is sooo sad
Also I'm sad that not the crax0r and the rest of the guys claimed the prize, their were so close and focusing on real stuff.

Well, it was fun and the begging and pain at the end (fu...ing trolls) but after reading this I am somehow relief, no way on Earth I could solve it. Time to move on to some serious and normal puzzles.

[Pan Troglodytes]

@ytcoinartist and others.. Are there any more unsolved puzzles, with a good potential prize?

Do you know any website where i can find a list of those puzzles?

I only know about three puzzles with crypto prizes right now: (1) https://www.neondistrict.io - 15 ETH, (2) http://viacoin.org/puzzle/ - 1337 VIA, (3) http://crypto.haluska.sk/crypto_db18.png - 0.035 BTC.

Good luck.

2 more:

• 1 btc - https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6r316b/there_is_1btc_hidden_in_the_terminal_it_is_yours/
  
• 0.01 btc - https://rushwallet.com/contest

That one looks interesting but it seems to be dead now (no activity whatsoever for 5 months on reddit), but the server is live and it is what counts

• 1 btc - https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6r316b/there_is_1btc_hidden_in_the_terminal_it_is_yours/
  

The server responses but its ssh responses changed during the course of the day today, as if they are constantly changing something.
Is anybody else trying to solve it maybe, even if it is a shared effort in between other puzzles - maybe we could create a dedicated thread (?)

[regisek]

That one looks interesting but it seems to be dead now (no activity whatsoever for 5 months on reddit), but the server is live and it is what counts

• 1 btc - https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6r316b/there_is_1btc_hidden_in_the_terminal_it_is_yours/
  

The server responses but its ssh responses changed during the course of the day today, as if they are constantly changing something.
Is anybody else trying to solve it maybe, even if it is a shared effort in between other puzzles - maybe we could create a dedicated thread (?)

What's the point in cooperation? You will write your findings, I'll write my findings, and then some dude from secret board will base on them and get the prize. Not happening. I think in few years maybe the bitcoin puzzle thing will be still, but all the forums will go dead. People aren't stupid and they learn from mistakes.

EDIT: More over (I'm really bitter right now), the rules where not to brute force and cooperate. And how this thing got solved? By brute force and lack of cooperation. Just LOL.

[superteshi]

[UPDATE 4/3/2015]

There is 4.87 BTC contained within the image shown below via private key.  Follow through this thread to help navigate yourself through the start to finish of this elaborate puzzle! There are a lot of cool crypto techniques used during this journey...

How many are a lot? You list?
Many insincere deceptive delusions of creators. That's why it took a long time.

[bboe]

That one looks interesting but it seems to be dead now (no activity whatsoever for 5 months on reddit), but the server is live and it is what counts

• 1 btc - https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6r316b/there_is_1btc_hidden_in_the_terminal_it_is_yours/
  

The server responses but its ssh responses changed during the course of the day today, as if they are constantly changing something.
Is anybody else trying to solve it maybe, even if it is a shared effort in between other puzzles - maybe we could create a dedicated thread (?)

I spent about two hours last night looking at that challenge. I ran all the commands I could across all the files and directories and saved a copy of all the files:

Feel free to check it out here:
https://github.com/bboe/something

I wasn't able to get anywhere via SSH and I have no idea yet where this address comes from that someone on Reddit suggested is the one holding the coin: 1KWkDsv9VsdwsCWpJ2mu9R5AgUWgSPQHjf

I'd love to hear any thoughts that you are anyone else has.

[bachus]

[UPDATE 4/3/2015]

There is 4.87 BTC contained within the image shown below via private key.  Follow through this thread to help navigate yourself through the start to finish of this elaborate puzzle! There are a lot of cool crypto techniques used during this journey...

How many are a lot? You list?
Many insincere deceptive delusions of creators. That's why it took a long time.

There were many previous steps/puzzles before the painting was even revealed. You noobs just want to find something to whine about and are too lazy to even read the thread from the beginning.

[SteshaScott]

Hope you guys have not given up on this. Slow progress I assume now?

[YuTü.Co.in]

Hope you guys have not given up on this. Slow progress I assume now?

Excellent post, bud. Surprised to see you've yet earned any sM. Yes, it may take decades before it's solved. I'm leaning toward the answer lies in the game of checkers, the horse being a red herring. Oh, and the flames are a lie. 

[ytcoinartist]

The solver is getting ready to publish his own walk-thru explaining how he decoded the painting. And when you read it you will see that 1) It didn't require to be brute forced. 2) I'll quote him here as he hasn't published the document yet, but he says "Number of permutations of the three data channels multiplied by the number of possible interpretations of channel states yields in 48 options."

So after reading how befuddled people are on this thread that there were too many possibilities and it wasn't fair, I see why this person walked away with the prize and I think he did a fine job. I'm looking forward to his published walk-thru, as it shows he is a brilliant and logical thinker.   

[sini]

The solver is getting ready to publish his own walk-thru explaining how he decoded the painting. And when you read it you will see that 1) It didn't require to be brute forced. 2) I'll quote him here as he hasn't published the document yet, but he says "Number of permutations of the three data channels multiplied by the number of possible interpretations of channel states yields in 48 options."

So after reading how befuddled people are on this thread that there were too many possibilities and it wasn't fair, I see why this person walked away with the prize and I think he did a fine job. I'm looking forward to his published walk-thru, as it shows he is a brilliant and logical thinker.   

The only thing I will argue is that there is a lot of interpretable ambiguity in the painting. Likely the reason it was not solved for 3 years.

[YuTü.Co.in]

The solver is getting ready to publish his own walk-thru explaining how he decoded the painting. And when you read it you will see that 1) It didn't require to be brute forced. 2) I'll quote him here as he hasn't published the document yet, but he says "Number of permutations of the three data channels multiplied by the number of possible interpretations of channel states yields in 48 options."

So after reading how befuddled people are on this thread that there were too many possibilities and it wasn't fair, I see why this person walked away with the prize and I think he did a fine job. I'm looking forward to his published walk-thru, as it shows he is a brilliant and logical thinker.  

With apologies for being the asshole here before somebody else beats me to the punch, do you realize that you went from detailing aspects of the forthcoming release, even quoting its content, to espousing that you look forward to reading Isaac's work? Again, apologies.

[regisek]

I include instead of her the link.

(...)

EDIT: I have removed it, it isn't permanent link. Thank you all for help.

EDIT2: I also delete coin_artist post, overall there is no sense in making extra drama.

[sini]

Here is the solution: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PejOj6qIC38dA_TiNX9z8tS9Yf3X1CI-/view?usp=sharing

Just in case Discord link vanishes.

[YuTü.Co.in]

Here is the solution: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PejOj6qIC38dA_TiNX9z8tS9Yf3X1CI-/view?usp=sharing

Just in case Discord link vanishes.

Horton hears a clue: Isaac employs the American spelling of "color" which begs the question, which country does Isaac reside in that bans possession of bitcoin et al. and where its residents don't spell "color" as "colour"?

[Thoth1978]

He could be an expatriate living anywhere. But if he could get into trouble for having/using Bitcoin, is it really cool to try to find him?

[YuTü.Co.in]

Quote from discord from coin_artist

Code:

Ok the solver just pushed the solution walk thru for TORCHED H34R7S. I'll post it here first for anyone interested. I don't really feel like posting it on bitcointalk right now bc you all are bunch of haters.

No comment.

I include instead of her the link.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/403741831394885633/410180307841581066/solution.pdf

Here is the solution: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PejOj6qIC38dA_TiNX9z8tS9Yf3X1CI-/view?usp=sharing

Just in case Discord link vanishes.

Horton hears a clue: Isaac employs the American spelling of "color" which begs the question, which country does Isaac reside in that bans possession of bitcoin et al. and where its residents don't spell "color" as "colour"?

Boy, you guys are quick ...

[YuTü.Co.in]

He could be an expatriate living anywhere. But if he could get into trouble for having/using Bitcoin, is it really cool to try to find him?

I'm just saying is that Isaac resides in ... let's say  ... Weston, FL, then that would negate him living abroad, eh?

[feedo]

So after reading how befuddled people are on this thread that there were too many possibilities and it wasn't fair, I see why this person walked away with the prize and I think he did a fine job. I'm looking forward to his published walk-thru, as it shows he is a brilliant and logical thinker.  

WTF is that !!

as it shows he is a brilliant and logical thinker

This means that every single solver over more than 3 years is stupid and unlogical thinkers! (except Isaac of course).

only that unknown (aka isaac) is a brilliant and logical thinker in your opinion!
which means that the problem wasn't at all in the puzzle itself, instead it was in those stupid unlogical solvers!!..."SHAME ON YOU"

How could be a puzzle with 36 pages solution and high difficulty took the solvers only few weeks and 1.5 pages solution puzzle took more than 3 years?! if it wasn't about Luck and stupid random work!

"SHAME ON YOU!" you should apologise for your shit post and that big Troll puzzle.