I stumbled upon Andrew DeSantis’ twitter a few days, and it sent me down another rabbit hole, one just as intriguing as when I first discovered #Bitcoin. Everything about his twitter is very cryptic and hard to follow. From it, I’ve found a few other interesting twitter accounts, such as that of Mark Wilcox. Yesterday, he posted this tweet containing the block hash: #00000000000000000021e800c1e8df51b22c1588e5a624bea17e9faa34b2dc4a. Since then, I’ve watched all of #cryptotwitter be in awe, with nobody really offering an explanation of things. I’ll be honest, I’m as confused as everyone else, and this won’t be a clear cut explanation but I figured I would write up my findings and maybe there’s an answer somewhere within.
A lot of the fuss has to do with the leading zeros in the beginning of the block hash, just like in the genesis block which remains unsolved. More of the focus, though, is with the 21e800 trailing the first 18 digits. 21e8 is important because it signifies an exceptionally simple theory of everything. Often referred to as “E8 Theory, it’s a physics preprint proposing a basis for a unified field theory, which attempts to describe all known fundamental interactions in physics and to stand as a possible theory of everything.
“̵2̵1̵e̵8̵0̵0̵”̵ ̵s̵h̵o̵u̵l̵d̵ ̵h̵a̵p̵p̵e̵n̵ ̵r̵a̵n̵d̵o̵m̵l̵y̵ ̵e̵v̵e̵r̵y̵ ̵1̵6̵⁶̵ ̵≈̵ ̵1̵6̵.̵7̵ ̵m̵i̵l̵l̵i̵o̵n̵ ̵b̵l̵o̵c̵k̵s̵ ̵o̵r̵ ̵a̵b̵o̵u̵t̵ ̵e̵v̵e̵r̵y̵ ̵3̵0̵0̵ ̵y̵e̵a̵r̵s̵ ̵o̵n̵ ̵a̵v̵e̵r̵a̵g̵e̵.̵ ̵I̵n̵ ̵o̵r̵d̵e̵r̵ ̵t̵o̵ ̵b̵r̵u̵t̵e̵ ̵t̵h̵i̵s̵ ̵i̵n̵t̵o̵ ̵t̵h̵e̵ ̵h̵a̵s̵h̵,̵ ̵a̵l̵l̵ ̵2̵4̵ ̵d̵i̵g̵i̵t̵s̵ ̵w̵o̵u̵l̵d̵ ̵h̵a̵v̵e̵ ̵t̵o̵ ̵b̵e̵ ̵p̵r̵e̵d̵e̵t̵e̵r̵m̵i̵n̵e̵d̵.̵
Here’s more on mystery block one by Sergio_Demian_Lerner:
If you go into this #bitcointalk forum called “A mistery hidden in the Genesis Block” post they explain it further:
“The Genesis Block: Note that it starts with 43 zero bits. Why? The block target difficulty was much lower (around 32 bits), so we can assume Satoshi did this on purpose.
The Genesis Miner: The Satoshi client source code version 0.1 does not have a special routine nor a command line switch to mine a Genesis block. In fact, the Genesis block was hard-coded, which probably means it was generated by another application whose source code is unknown. Nevertheless, since BTCs were essentially worthless at that time, and there was no competition between miners, we can assume he was mining with his own (and just one) personal computer.
The Satoshi PC: A good PC CPU in 2009 could do approximately 2²² double-hashes/second.
(Taking into account NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS=2, so two threads mine together). Satoshi client 0.1 did not have an optimization of these double-hashes, by backing up and restoring the intermediate state of the second hash application, so we can assume that the routine that created the genesis block did not had such optimization.
Lets estimate how much time it takes for Satoshi PC to solve the genesis block with 43 zeros:
Initial 22 bits (nonce test/second)
Add approximately 16 bits for a whole day (86400 ~= 2¹⁶)
Add approximately 2.5 bits to make it 6 days
Total bits: 41.5
So after 6 days there is approximately 17% change he may have found the genesis block. Was he lucky?
So did he let the miner working for 6 days on purpose?
The day Satoshi rested: Let’s check the genesis block date/time and block 1 date/time
Block 0: 2009–01–03 18:15:05
Block 1: 2009–01–09 02:54:25 (6 days later!)
Did Satoshi intent was to relate the six days the miner “worked” to create the genesis block to the time God took to create the world in the Genesis book of the old testament? I don’t think so, but the relation is interesting!
The nonce mismatch: Now we’ll try to check all these conjectures by analyzing the nonce size.
The nonce size in the block header is only 32 bits. Too short to try 2⁴³ possibilities. Then to achieve 43 bits zero bits in the block header hash, the miner app must have overflowed the nonce approximately 2¹¹ times, incrementing the bnExtraNonce each time the 32 bit nonce overflowed.
Now let’s look at the scriptsig in the coinbase:
04 ff ff 00 1d (1d00ffff, the Compact representation of Difficulty or nBits)
01 04 (Extra nonce)
45 5468652054696d6573203….
So the extra nonce is only 4, which means that the block was found only after 4 overflows, which means the genesis miner worked for only 4.2 minutes (estimated mean time).
I haven’t the slightest idea why these two values (2¹¹ and 4) differ by 500x.
The explanation that Satoshi did have 500 computers while mining the genesis block is unsatisfactory, since the the number of initial zero bits in block 1 is only 32. Why acquire such computing power to and then never use it again?
One of the possible explanations is that the Genesis Miner did not increment the extra nonce when the nonce overflowed, but changed the destination address of the coinbase transaction. This in turn could mean that the destination address 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa is not a valid address, but a nonce.
Can you solve the mystery?
Best regards,
Sergio.”
I’m not completely sure whether or not the mystery above has been solved, but the similarities between block one and block 528249 could be meaningful. This event is improbable by chance, and whoever created this block (if deliberately) would’ve needed leagues more computational power than the current hashrate. From the tweet below, with 1 exhash/sec, it would’ve taken 2512 to predetermine the first 24 characters here.
For all intents and purposes, let’s just assume that time travel does not exist. From what I’ve gathered in my two days of following DeSantis, he’s been working on a quantum computer based on Bitcoin, called DeOS. His website is, of course, as cryptic as everything he posts. So this block hash potentially confirms the idea that whatever he’s been working on has successfully been accomplished. Or could it be Satoshi giving us a message? Some are hypothesizing that there are uses to Bitcoin that haven’t been unveiled yet, and that the implications of this are too large to be realized in present day. I haven’t had a night to sleep on this, but if anything it’s made it clear that for however one knows about Bitcoin, there’s always more to learn.
P.S.: This could all be completely random and meaningless. Just like everything else in life. ;)
Other random points:
- O̵t̵h̵e̵r̵ ̵p̵e̵o̵p̵l̵e̵ ̵a̵r̵e̵ ̵p̵o̵i̵n̵t̵i̵n̵g̵ ̵o̵u̵t̵ ̵t̵h̵a̵t̵ ̵t̵h̵e̵ ̵2̵1̵e̵8̵ ̵i̵s̵ ̵s̵i̵g̵n̵i̵f̵i̵c̵a̵n̵t̵ ̵b̵e̵c̵a̵u̵s̵e̵ ̵o̵f̵ ̵t̵h̵e̵ ̵t̵o̵t̵a̵l̵ ̵s̵u̵p̵p̵l̵y̵.̵ ̵2̵1̵*̵1̵0̵⁸̵ ̵i̵s̵ ̵2̵.̵1̵ ̵b̵i̵l̵l̵i̵o̵n̵,̵ ̵s̵o̵ ̵I̵’̵m̵ ̵n̵o̵t̵ ̵s̵u̵r̵e̵ ̵t̵h̵a̵t̵’̵s̵ ̵d̵e̵l̵i̵b̵e̵r̵a̵t̵e̵,̵ ̵b̵u̵t̵ ̵i̵s̵ ̵i̵n̵t̵e̵r̵e̵s̵t̵i̵n̵g̵ ̵r̵e̵g̵a̵r̵d̵l̵e̵s̵s̵.̵
21e8 is important because it signifies an exceptionally simple theory of everything. Often referred to as “E8 Theory, it’s a physics preprintproposing a basis for a unified field theory, which attempts to describe all known fundamental interactions in physics and to stand as a possible theory of everything.
Check out: http://21e8.com/ - “It gets weirder.” via Juan S Galt.
The Etymology of ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ is effectively: “Awoken by being at the source.” via imgur
- Somebody asked what the odds were on that block being produced and this was Andrew’s response, so highly unlikely:
I’m going to keep updating this post with more information I find.
There’s so much more to this than meets the eye.
Added a part 2: https://medium.com/@coop__soup/so-what-is-deos-6be84fd32648
Follow me on #twitter to stay updated: https://twitter.com/coop__soup
