THE EOS CYPHER
Let me preface this message by stating “I LOVE GAMES!”. Not just video games, although my brother gave me his Atari 2600 and I went on to own at least one console from every generation since, but also dominoes, canasta, poker, backgammon, board games, D&D, crossword, Soduko, the list is endless. To further that, I’ve love treasure hunts. I read and reread stories of Oak Island, buried treasure, hidden caches, Knights of the Golden Circle, Seven Cities of Gold. I have a metal detector and I’ve dug up some pretty neat stuff on land that has been in my family for generations, but that’s a story for another day.
So when I stumbled across a post by Stellabelle on twitter about a cypher on Pixeos which would lead to the unlocking of the private key of an EOS account containing $750 of EOS and other tokens…I WAS ALL IN! There was an EOS account, Nibogonibogo, that had drawn an mysterious code referencing a twitter handle and a 250 EOS private key.
Upon further investigation, the twitter account had listed a two page clue and a series of 50 pictograms. Knowing that the EOS private key contains 51 characters, it made sense that this series of 50 tweets was the private key to the account.
I dug back into my childhood and recalled some of the cypher knowledge I had picked up. Solve for the two and three letter words first. Using this methodology and a simple excel spreadsheet tied to the cypher I was able to pretty quickly discern the wording of the note “The squirrel does not sit upon one million nuts. Once you taste the lambo you will never have enough. You scream more, but more is the central illusion. You don’t want more deep down. You want to be free from all which enslaves you. Always, Cookies.”
I took this message, realizing that the cypher contained both upper case and lower case letters and gave a green code to ones that were contained in the cypher, yellow indicated that a symbol appeared very similar to one in the cypher and was likely an upper case version of that letter and then red was totally unknown. Since there were only three letters unknown, and two in the private key, it was pretty easy to swap them out and try different scenarios. When the key finally was accepted by the mobile wallet, I felt euphoric! Hours spent playing a game had paid off to the tune of over 200 EOS! I quickly transferred most of the EOS out and changed the private keys to protect my hoard.
I reached out to Nibogo on twitter thanking them for their loot and the experience. I had a few questeions
Is Nibogo a real name? “Nibo Go means the Language of Do Not Worry.” Nibo means do not worry in Bengali and Go means language in Japanese.”
Why create the cypher? “I created the cipher as a way for everyone, especially crypto whales, to remember the importance of mystery and creating magical things, not just for our own lives but for others too. The only people who can really make a massive difference in the imbalance of wealth are wealthy people. Most wealthy people are only concerned with how to make more. I’ve always wanted to make crypto puzzles and the idea of a hidden world has appealed to me my whole life. I’ve always wanted to give away a substantial prize, but I was unsure I could give away that amount of money. It became a test of my own greed.”
Please consider donating a few eos on behalf of Nibogo to EmpowermeEOS. You can find out more about the initiative here https://twitter.com/empowermeeos.
You’ve read this far, now for the reward! I am paying it forward and want to have an EOS treasure hunt of my own. Please stay tuned in the next few days for more information on #Thesecretkey. Perhaps there is even a clue in this very article…
Happy Hunting!
