TL;DR:
- Transaction detected on the network: A 255-byte message was recorded in the OP_RETURN output within Bitcoin block 963,629.
- Low wallet entropy: The author claims to have derived the private key using exclusively public parameters from the Genesis block mined in 2009.
- Clue mechanism: The transaction paid a 250-satoshi fee to miners and included an interactive clue system to crack the access.
On Saturday, August 22, an anonymous developer published a Bitcoin wallet puzzle by embedding a readable message directly into the blockchain. The creator claims the wallet’s private key was generated using public data from the Genesis block created by Satoshi Nakamoto.
The discovery was identified by Galaxy Research analysts following the mining of block 963,629 by the Foundry USA pool at 19:45 UTC. Within this 500-byte transaction, the sender utilized a 255-byte OP_RETURN output—a size researchers described as unusually large for direct on-chain text storage.
Two questions have been asked to the puzzle creator questions and he’s answered them.
Q 1: “Is the witness script a hash lock, a multisig, or something else?”
A: “The witness script is a multisig.”
Q 2: “How many keys, what threshold, and how are the keys derived from… https://t.co/nXA7TLRf6Q
— Galaxy Research (@glxyresearch) August 24, 2026
The network fee for this transaction was 250 satoshis (approximately 0.60 sat/vB). In the decoded text, the programmer explained that the private key possesses deliberately low entropy, eliminating the need for external backups since all required parameters reside within the network’s first block.
Technical Implications and Analysis of the Genesis Block
Bitcoin’s Genesis block, processed on January 3, 2009, contains immutable values including the timestamp (1231006505), the nonce (2083236893), the Merkle root, and the block hash. These fields are publicly accessible to every node across the ecosystem. According to technical notes from Galaxy Research, deducing a private key generated under this scheme depends on the mathematical formula and specific transformations applied to these records.
Standard Bitcoin address generation requires high-entropy sources to resist brute-force attacks. Cryptographic security standards indicate that wallets generated from publicly known datasets introduce structural vulnerabilities if the derivation algorithm is identified.
The initiative also features an interactive dynamic where users can send transactions to a specified address to receive clues proportional to the contributed amount. According to KuCoin market reports, this cryptographic challenge neither alters protocol mechanics nor unlocks the original 50 BTC coinbase reward from Block 0, which remains unspendable due to the early client’s original codebase logic.
Over the past 24 hours, no outgoing transactions signed by the purported private key have been detected. The crypto community continues to monitor the ledger for a valid digital signature or an on-chain transfer to formally verify the puzzle’s resolution.
