Topic: Bulltardia, A bitcoin fable (Read 732 times)

Congrats to them, then.

I was, but then I left it, if we're talking about that server with the #bulltardia text channel.

But I did threw money at you and you didn't refuse them. You accepted my 50,000 satoshis 7 times and there was a time when you accepted 200,000 satoshis for a hint of the 9th key. I was literally telling you "Take my money!", because I couldn't subscribe on your patreon. You told me that I can buy random hints for 50,000 sats, and thus I thought that you'd consider it normal to give me 8 hints. But you buddy, took my virgin with the hints! I tried to be cool, but it seemed that you just didn't want to sell me hints.

How do you define scam? To me, scam is a waste of time garnished with some BS in the end. You may gave the money to someone, but everything that happened after the announcement of the passphrase was a complete chaos that costed every player's valuable time. So I'll recommend you to reconsider that:


You messed up, I get it, that's human. The problem is that you had a lot of chances to correct it and make it professional, but in the end you filled it with a ton of non-sense BS. You knew that everybody was brute forcing the first address, but you decided to change it with a different one that had received 0.1 BTC in the same day! How can this not look suspicious? And after some minutes that you did, the output was spent and ta-da! Hunt was over.

You should decide what to do with the password. If you asked only those who paid for hints, you'd read that you should reveal it. If you asked only those who were just searching for fun you'd read that you shouldn't reveal it. It is pretty obvious that if you ask them all, you would see that no one wanted the password revealing and that's because the majority of the people hadn't bought any hints. They money would have been taken instantly from the patreons. We all started a hunt that had no password and people gave you their money believing that they can do it. They didn't pay for a hunt with a passphrase. On the other hand, the ones that didn't pay anything had nothing to lose. So they would ask for another enjoyable puzzle. So no, it was not fair. Neither democratic. You didn't take votes from people that had the same opportunities.

When did that "then" occur? In the last day? When everyone was busy?

I tried to explain you what it had to do, but you ~kept keeping the secrets of the hunt away from me~ and maybe that's why you ignored me. The first address you had posted, the one we're all struggling with brute forcing all that time but in the last minutes you changed it? Yeah that one. It was announced as the *rewarding* address. That address still has 0.1 BTC from a single output. The way I see the structure of the transaction clearly shows that it's a coinjoin. What does that mean:  You're establishing a peer-to-peer connection with one or more stranger(s), you sign your inputs and you broadcast a transaction in which there are outputs than are hard to track (if not impossible), because you've literally mix your inputs with him/her/them. This is a benefit if you're a man that respects privacy. On the first address you posted (gf8), it's pretty clear that it is coinjoin. What is the problem:  The outputs lead to some change addresses that cannot be accessed by someone who just has a mnemonic, a password and Wasabi opened. He needs to somehow derive the change addresses hoping that he/she will find the treasure.

If you organized a fun game, you'd get in return my respect from letting me be part of it. But that wasn't fun. That was a chaos.

Sorry that you "came down to earth", but that's internet. I didn't pretend that I liked your comic. It was a well-read, but since I read it once, I was there only for the money. You're talented at painting, but once you announce 0.1 BTC reward, you shouldn't expect anything less. In my country, a person has to work an 8 hour job for 6 months in order to get that money. You should reconsider the amount of bitcoins you were giving away.

Okay, since I read that there was an actual winner, I'll flag it as neutral and not negative.

NOT A SCAM. A TEAM WON

• The codecrafting team members are apparently long time treasure hunters, as you can see from going to their discord channel: https://discord.com/channels/423625956444340225/726063631137243148
• Angelo aka blackhatcoiner is aware of that as he is a member of that discord channel
• Angelo, you also know from our conversations in dms that many times you had to pull my leg to buy patron hints from me, which I only did because you said you wouldn't/couldn't subscribe to Patreon as you didn't want to use fiat. Even then, I was dragging my feet and refused to sell you more when you were basically throwing money at me. If this was a scam, I wouldn't have probably given you such a hard time taking your money...  
• Yes the hunt was far from perfect and I did mess up on a few occasions. Password, address, and also gauging hints and puzzle difficulty. Some ended up being much harder than I hoped, others way too easy. In the end, there was no promise of a professionally crafted hunt. As I mentioned in telegram, this was my first time at making one, and recognized its design flaws, especially that I never really gave any thought about brute forcing or was even aware of what it really involved up until recently. My now obviously naive perception was that a crypto puzzle would be solved by trying to recover a wallet from the wallet UI, not by using special tools that look at derivation paths to match addresses etc... Had I known all of this last year when I created this hunt, I would have certainly been less casual about it, and no matter what should have definitely been more careful when setting up the wallet.  
• however, everyone was made aware of the issues pretty much at the same time. When the password issue was uncovered, I immediately consulted with everyone and put the outcome to a vote. The community voted for a password puzzle which was created and submitted soon after. I was then asked to use iancoleman tool to verify there was no other issue. The result was posted with screenshot of the matching address, along with which derivation path to use, address updated and recommended everyone to use Wasabi as the private keys didn't match the keys showing on iancoleman tool. Soon after the funds were taken.
• Still not sure what coinjoin has to do with anything or why it is even relevant here In the end, Angelo just got outrun by a better team who was faster at finding the final password and with, I suppose, more processing power, since bruteforcing seemed to have been the name of the game. Should the hunt have ended earlier, yes most likely, would it have made a difference in the winner, it doesn't seem like it.
• In the end, I feel very shitty for working hard to organize a fun game, give out 0.1btc, which is a lot for me, (and no, the few hints that were sold didn't make up at all for it), and in return, get such level of saltiness and being called names. The worst part is to realize that a few people that pretended liking the comic were here just for the money. Things can get ugly quickly when greed is involved, should have known better not to mix this kind of incentive with my art... Lesson learned.
• Angelo, your post is sadly painful, it hurts, but I'm sure you feel the same otherwise you wouldn't have gone in length to write it. Would prefer not to leave it on this sour note and would you feel like it, I am open to talk this through with you, feel free to dm.

PS: For those interested in the solution, the winners have released an article on medium https://codecrafting.medium.com/solving-bulltardia-a-treasure-hunt-hidden-in-a-bitcoin-comic-602f93f0086a


Cheers, Dim
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While bulltardia was a well-made comic, its hunt which everybody wanted to win, was a scam. And not just a straight-forward money scam. This was one of the worst ways that I've got scammed in my life, wasted time combined with anxiety and loss of money! This guy created an objectively hard hunt, in which he stated that the winner *gets* 0.1 BTC and in the end no one got a penny. But let me take things from the beginning, when it still seemed a pretty legit adventure.

In the 29th of June, ten million satoshis were sent to bc1q90mun9fvh80apxavxrv8m8efzr9dd20ugymgf8. That was the rewarding address. I'd share you his tweet he announces it but he's made a lot of them and I can't find it right now. That's why archive.org exists: bulltardia.com/treasure-hunt/ (in 17 of February). (As you can see it says that the "treasure is buried" on the same linked address)

Dim Zayan allowed to buy hints. A random hint for a random key (but not for a key you'd bought in the past). It costed 50,000 sats which made me wonder, why does he accept such small amount of satoshis since he was giving millions of them? I couldn't even think that it'd be a scam, that person with all these podcasts and paintings seemed so legit. It would damage his fame if he scammed us. I sent him a total of 550,000 satoshis for hints, and I was feeling so sure that I would win! He then tweeted that there will be a telegram team for bulltardia fans. I said why not, I joined. There were many others who were trying to win the puzzle, some of them since July! Until then, it seemed a very challenging hunt. Everyone was struggling with brute forcing, we had our doubts that we were wrong, but since no one had found it yet, it was pretty clear that it had been a mnemonic no one had tried yet.

February 23, 2021.

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That day, Dim sent me this on telegram:


To cut a long story short, Dim stated that all these months of brute forcing, we were losing our time. The fact that the rewarding address needed the correct mnemonic AND the BIP32 passphrase is what started stinking fraud to me. The fairest thing he could do would be an announcement of the password after a quick excuse. But no! He let the hunters vote and it was pretty obvious that the majority didn't want to reveal it. If Dim revealed the password, people who had bought hints, including me, would find the address pretty soon. Actually, instantly. But that was the hunt. We were searching for a mnemonic without password, it'd be unfair to appear a password out of nowhere. I did not pay for a hunt with passphrase.


March 7, 2021.

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Here's the part where he exposes himself. Yesterday, Dim changed the rewarding address. You can visit bulltardia.com/treasure-hunt or this archive.is link (in case he deletes his site) to verify it by yourself. The linked address changed from bc1q90mun9fvh80apxavxrv8m8efzr9dd20ugymgf8 to bc1q05c8nlzz8c926skgazn59vt2x2ah2kdm6y7ajc and at that moment someone broadcasted a transaction spending the output. I want you to notice something. The second address (7aj) received 0.1 BTC the same day the first (gf8) did. When I asked Dim why he did that, he never replied. The person by the username "CodeCrafting" "won" the hunt, but, sorry, I don't bite this. Too many coincidences to be true. My conclusion is that Dim was pocketing our satoshis all along, knowing from the beginning that he did not plan to reward anyone.

But there is another thing that didn't make sense. Dim said that he had made the hunt in a way, to give brute forcers a hard time, but mentioned that he did not use anything custom, *just* wasabi. The transaction of the first address (gf8) was a probably coinjoin transaction meaning that its external was equal with 1. Anyone that would find the mnemonic AND the passphrase could not confirm that he/she won, unless he/she generated the first 30-50 change addresses ^[1]. Dim answered that he is not a tech-guy and doesn't know a lot about it.

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[1] If you make a coinjoin transaction, the funds will be sent to a change address of your derivation path. Wasabi with max anonymity doesn't exceed the 100th address as I've tried, but it can go really deep. If you import a seed it doesn't generate you the first 100 change addresses and thus it won't show you any balance of a change address that deep.

I've now submitted a negative trusted feedback to @dimzayan.

For the treasure hunters who still haven't found the second key by now or want confirmation, it is now available for purchase in the Bulltardia store.

https://www.bulltardia.com/product/second-key/

For instance, a Bip-39 seed phrase is made from specific words

I see it from the positive side. I prefer searching this on my free time than watching TV.

I was curious if the mnemonic was randomly generated or you chose the words. I assumed the second, since I can't imagine you trying to be comfort with random words and a story at the same time. I guess you knew what would happen on episode 8, from July. But today, I saw this on your patreon page:


It helps to know how a seed phrase is generated? Why?

Low time preference  

I read the 8th episode and I can admit that I enjoyed it. After months of work, Dim did a great work. But, intentionally, I would like to say some things about the hunt. I started searching for the keys in 6th of January and I was feeling really sure about my choices. Today, I must have changed at least 5-6 words but still, an important amount of uncertainty exists. I don't hide it, I've bought hints 5 times. Five. Not to mention the hours I've spent rereading it.

What's my conclusion: This hunt is meant to be hunted, but in reality, it's hunting you. I don't mean that Dim's idea is bad, neither that he is a scammer. His work clearly states the opposite, I just believe that whoever wants to play this "little" game of hunt, then they must have patience, plenty of time and strong nerves. And that's because you have to find some words that you'll soon see you're not sure about them and there's nothing telling you that you're getting closer.

It's like being blind and trying to get out of a labyrinth at the same time.


Nonetheless, giving away 0.1 bitcoins is a great incentive and I became an addict thinking that I'll never make that much money from a signature campaign (since I don't buy bitcoins). I have literally no idea how many people are obsessed by this hunt, but I guess I'm not the only one. I hope that someone will finally escape from the maze, just to write us the answers. I want to see how close I'd been.

I'll, now, write the keys that are the hardest ones IMO:

• 2nd
• 5th
• 8th

The funny part is that on the 2nd and on the 5th I've bought a hint. Still, it seems impossible to answer. I've long forgotten the brute force way. In order to brute force you must have two or less words unknown. Even if the hunt wasn't designed to be brute forced, there is no other way to find the treasure at the moment.

Fortunately, Dim announces new hints on twitter periodically which helps a lot. If Dim hadn't announced that the 2nd key starts with "R" I would most likely waste my time with "hope" and "obey".

New Episode is out!

Episode 8 - Thank You Mother
https://www.bulltardia.com/episode-8-thank-you-mother/

Happy reading

I'd go with Google Translate's first definition: "excessive pride in or admiration of one's own appearance or achievements.", that's also what's used when creating a Bitcoin vanity address.

What exactly does "vanity" mean? I'm trying to translate it on my language, but I get tons of different results. Is it like pseudo-pride? Or emptiness?

The brute force that I mentioned was a possibility so hopefully you know about it. Good thing that what I want for your hunt is happening and that you do not get destroyed by doing your passion financially. I hope that more will see your work and get more patron, get to other social media platforms to promote your work and set up more donation channels while doing that because I believe that you will be successful. Cheers.

Hey mate, Yes of course. I'll release the keys and will probably go over the hints and their correlations.

Hi OP,

Will you be releasing the key publicly once the treasure is claimed?

This helps those who are invested in the puzzle to see where they went wrong / where they went right .

Hey guys, let me clarify a few things:

• The hunt was not designed to be easy. The main goal of this hunt is to introduce Bulltardia, get people to read the comic and hopefully like it. I discourage brute forcing because that defeats the original purpose and I would much prefer the winner to be an avid reader who used his brain and imagination rather than a machine.
• That said, the difficulty will decrease over time as new hints are released periodically and publicly. But again, the hunt was not designed to be brute forced.
• While I sell some hints, the hunt can entirely be solved without them. So far, only the first key can be bought. This is intended for the laggards as many hints have already been given for it and it is probably the easiest to find.
• I don't make that much money out of it. Most of the income comes from book sales, auctions and patrons backing my work. Many thanks to them and the book collectors as I am not sure i'd be able to continue the work without their support
• I have a LN donation channel via tippin.me: https://tippin.me/@cryptgm And you're absolutely right, donations would help fund season 2 and another treasure hunt with it! So thank you in advance to anyone contributing.
• I cannot prevent anyone from reselling my virtual goods. After all, it's a free market

Hope that answers some of the questions

cheers,
Dim

Since OP has established the hunt then might as well get something out of it, never knew that OP was selling the hint, to take it up a notch, why not open up a donation channel for the work, I think people will support that, plus with those donations OP can create more hunts that will gather more people. I wish I was good at programming because I really like to create puzzles and hunts like this one. Also, selling hints can be a problem for OP because someone might sell it for a lower price and that will definitely damage the hunt in a way but it also makes the hunt harder.

Well at first, when I saw that he is selling the hints, I thought it was scam. Later though, I saw his brilliant art and the podcasts, so I stopped believing that. He explained me that he wants to earn the money that lost by selling the hints. Although, selling the first key for BTC0.01, is not a great move IMO. It isn't that difficult to find the first. I would personally give those satoshis for revealing the 7th or the 12th key. Brute forcing with 1 word takes couple of seconds.

If you have a programming prowess, you can make an automated brute force to find the missing digits. If it were the case, I think that it will definitely taken in a matter of hours. Also, in my opinion giving away hints is a pretty bad thing for the dude because that will make the hunt less thrilling, maybe if OP stopped giving hints, OP might create a community surrounding the puzzles that OP created.

I've dealt with it and after hours of rereading the comic, I can say that it's too difficult. Maybe it's because the 8th episode hasn't been released yet. The fact that it doesn't give you 2 out of 12 hints makes you brute force the 2 missing words. And that's just the start, look what other difficulties you'll find:

• Not knowing if it was generated with BIP39 or with electrum. (which doubles the brute forcing effort)
• Ambiguity. For example, look on the 10th key. It says "it has to do with personal care". If you search the wordlist you'll find tons of personal care related words. Although, Dim Zayan states that every word is related with the comic and it's not randomly chosen.
• Not understanding it. The second, which is IMO the hardest one, says something that requires too much research. I'm not sure if I've found the correct one, but I'll have to brute force hoping that that's the one.
• Persistence and patience. Brute forcing one mnemonic with 2 missing words on BIP39 may take you hours to finish. If you have 2-3 words that you're not entirely sure, then you'll have to try too many times.

Generally, in order to find those 10 million satoshis you need to spend hours on ensuring that your answers are correct and additional hours for brute forcing all the possible combinations, not only for the 2 missing words, but for the words of the known hints that are likely to have more than a word as an answer. Furthermore, you don't know the derivation path of the address, which could make the entire work useless.

I believe that if Dim gives the 7th or the 12th hint, the money will be taken within an hour.

The thrill of the hunt will be higher if you were to raise the stakes, just saying. I know that it will be difficult but hopefully make it harder because there are great people on the Internet that might be able to solve this hunt, make it kind of like a Cicada 3301 style. Or better yet, make a time crunch, set a deadline.
I have looked into it, I might not be able to solve it but mulling over it can be easy.