Launch Announcement
Dejitaru Tsuka launched on May 26th, amidst a shadowy shroud of mystery. Actually, no it didn’t, it launched with one weird blockchain message that some people picked up on. Then, with the degen crypto world being what it is, and people being who they are, they came together and threw their money at it blindly. Had they not, our story would have ended here, so it’s a good thing they did, because it turned out to be way more interesting than you would have thought.
On May 26th at 11.55 PM UTC, the following message was issued as a self send from the Tsuka deployer wallet.
Greetings.I’m a nobody.We have passed some test and failed others. Tsuka INSTILLS FEAR AND TERROR IN THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF THOSE WHO QUESTION
https://etherscan.io/tx/0xd9f83749787880923975738db8e60fc7dad20c29b4689a08613e153069a69621
So, just your average token launch at this point…..Nonetheless people started buying the token, presumably to avoid being instilled with fear and terror, and because let’s be honest, (like a bad blind date) nobody likes people who ask too many questions.
Launch Follow Up
A little under 20 hours later, the next message was sent:
NoOne knows.But they will soon enough. The measure of a man is what he does with power Plato
https://etherscan.io/tx/0x80a29aaa77439117c8239eb478a5aa1e6efcbaf1b326b71341aff3be003a675d
Back when this was happening, I must admit, this message probably didn’t clear up much about what in the name of the mighty blockchain gods was happening. Other than the fact the Dev had a crush on Plato, and that presumably someone would know something at some point in the future that they don’t currently know now. Of course, this led to more people buying into the token. Because degen crypto doesn’t do what degen crypto does because degen crypto should, but degen crypto does what degen crypto does because degen crypto can.
The Code
At this juncture I’m skipping ahead a few messages so I don’t run out of hilarious jokes and masterful wordplay. The First hint that there was a code hidden somewhere in the messages was when the Dev sent an odd message on May 29th:
Ref 1.1
Table in Latin.. is md right?
https://etherscan.io/tx/0xbbbfebd6e6f4f85e9cd04a89c3a126423461ba8f047923e15482a719c6a3eae9
Table in Latin is a popular crossword hint. With the answer being “Mensa”, because that’s the literal translation of “Table” from Latin to English. The MD has been taken to be a reference to Matt Damon, a Mensa member linked to crypto through adverts he featured in for Crypto.com.
Ref 1.2
The next message sent a little over an hour later was a little harder to solve, but fairly straightforward:
. — — / — — ..-. / . — — .. — — -…- / — . ..- .. .-.. –
https://etherscan.io/tx/0x4ffbd5b0b9b2c4d506a37730324827418b7bdc55493d1d90ad233eb8702fe366
It doesn’t take a lot of seamen to recognize this was Morse code. When decoded it reads:
1 of 2 = GUIL
Of course, this led to a lot of hypothesizing in the group but ultimately did not result in any definitive answers (Not 100% here as I wasn’t present at this point)
Clues AND Mainstream Media Attention
This is where the Dejitaru Tsuka Dev shows exceptional efficiency, with a combination clue/media strategy initialisation in one message. Very impressive. Another hour or so after the GUIL message, another message was sent. The code here wasn’t clear initially, as it was this message that had started the buzz around The Guardian’s Alex Hern to potentially be involved with the coin. However, this turns to be a distraction. The key element is 2–12:
Ref 1.3
hernalex@proton.me
Fully encrypted Guardian contact 2–12=https://twitter.com/protonmail?s=21
https://etherscan.io/tx/0x36394a3cea56036a212a13a06109aa2af4978441a5c8564c27095f9ffd9052a4
Another few hours go by and the most cryptic clue yet appears on the blockchain:
Ref 1.4
GG3¢ò÷GvGFW”æ6öÒöÖF÷W3÷3Ó# ¦GG3¢òö&”æ6òôÄãFs×0¦GG3¢òö&”æ6òóV¥¤ÓEfà ¦GG3¢ò÷GvGFW”æ6öÒ÷FVÇVfgvV×3÷3Ó# ¦GG3¢òö&”æ6ò÷u´Ãvµ ¦GG3¢ò÷GvGFW”æ6öÒö7'Fõö&FÆ÷&Cs÷3Ó# £3436cs&CCf4SD&T6SSdcsSscfCC`¥6÷WB÷WBFòFR&VÂöæW2âôª
https://etherscan.io/tx/0xf5eb5bcd9a1fafafaf911cc6e2794565f46762944b0d21896bd546f519ac41d2
There was speculation about what this could have meant, but went unsolved (I don’t think this was actually looked at too hard, as take 1 of Alex madness began)
YOUNG HERN IS IN THE HOUSE
May 30th was consequently the first shakeout day, when Alex Hern rocked up in the TG and told everyone it was a scam as he was not the Dev. Many people had taken the message sent previously (Ref 1.3) to mean that Alex Hern was the dev. Safe to say he almost got a hern-ia and was not the happiest person in the world to find this out. An_Epitaph got in touch with him to smooth things over and that’s when we found out an article would be written. Queue excitement and more people joining the party, myself included.
THE CLUE THAT WAS A CLUE AND A CLUE TO THE CLUES
On May 31st a few messages were sent, as well as the Dev’s first big buy competition:
Ref 1.5
ÆGFÆR&BöbgVâù)
12 hours starting on first block confirmation of this message.
1 random buyer will receive $750 in usdc. The largest buyer will receive $750 in usdc. Payout 2 hours after this ends. Can be direct transfer or seed pharse. Your choice.
https://etherscan.io/tx/0x09105f490101425306ab0d7f0dad7477c1e06a11c942f2582d9cea1cfaf00e0c
No one took much notice of the top line of that message. Must have been an error. Sending messages though the blockchain involves coding etc, so just means the Dev is human after all. Everyone makes mistakes.
Move Along Please, Nothing To See Here
Over the next 3 weeks, I thought something still wasn’t right. There were messages that were clear, responses to external factors, responses to the Guardian article also some spiritual references, and messages with prophetic wording. The latter were presumably meant to inspire excitement and faith about the token. But then there came the totally random messages, that didn’t fit anywhere. I’d convinced myself there was something more. It had occurred to me that the buy competition was offered to be either direct transfer or seed phrase. We’d spoken about it in the TG, thought the seed phrase was a pretty cool option. But then, when it came time for payout, we were all just so excited that the payout was actually happening, that no-one seemed to notice (or care) that it was immediately a direct transfer. Winning payout is a winning payout after all.
The dev had told us to look at the addresses he made transfers to, that they were important. We looked, a few notable people were there, some links were made. This all led to excitement about who the dev knows, or may know, what people could be involved. All good stuff.
What The BIP39
At one point I started down a wallet rabbit hole. An odd amount of Eth was transferred to an odd address. Weird activity level, low transaction history. No-one thought anything of it, but I carried on digging. Nothing came of it, but that was when I started looking deeper into all of it. Trying to work it out. This was the first time I attempted to decode a seed phrase. I pulled up the BIP39 mnemonic phrase word list, and picked up all the transactions that were made with amounts of Eth that aligned with words. Found that (Ref 1.2) Guilt was a word on the list (and guil could lead to no other word), so that’s 1 of 12 then. The message referencing 2–12 (Ref 1.3) was then the second word. At this point I was stuck on Eth values so figured the word to be Voyage as the Eth amount ended in 1969. However no combination of transaction values led to any valid seed phrase.
As more people joined the Telegram, old Dev messages got brought back up, and discussed and reviewed by fresh eyes. A lot of discussion took place around the long coded message (Ref 1.4), different thoughts were chucked about. Different methods of decoding were proposed. One member pointed out that the dashed vertical line symbol look like a line break. I got very excited by this but we still couldn’t quite produce anything that made sense.
We all started playing around with the big coded message (Ref1.4), couldn’t do much there, a lot of attempts were talked of in the TG but no solutions, so I started looking at the buy competition message (Ref 1.5) later that night. The coded element was smaller so figured it would be easier to work out. I played around with it, ran it through different decoders, hoping something would come up. Long story short, flip the text, decode it with a UTF-16 character set, then putting the result into a translator, resulted in Sigh. The other interesting element of this message was that it was an announcement for a 12 hour buy competition. So I took that to mean that 12 meant it was 12 of 12.
Maybe That’s I
Had a quick check on the word list to see if it was a seed phrase word, it wasn’t, but Sight was, and again, sigh couldn’t lead to any other words. So there it was, first and last words of the seed phrase, the fact that both were missing a T couldn’t have been a coincidence. So I had immediate confirmation that how I decoded the message was correct, without having to be told.
ENTER THE CRIME DRAGON
Going back to the big message (Ref 1.4) it was now clear (sort of….). Separate the lines, reverse the text, plug it into the decoder and one by one, seed phrase words were being produced. I’ll break it down for one below:
Separating the message by the line breaks gives:
GG3¢ò÷GvGFW”æ6öÒöÖF÷W3÷3Ó# ¦
GG3¢òö&”æ6òôÄãFs×0¦
GG3¢òö&”æ6òóV¥¤ÓEfà ¦
GG3¢ò÷GvGFW”æ6öÒ÷FVÇVfgvV×3÷3Ó# ¦
GG3¢òö&”æ6ò÷u´Ãvµ ¦
GG3¢ò÷GvGFW”æ6öÒö7'Fõö&FÆ÷&Cs÷3Ó#
£343 6cs&CCf4SD&T6SSdcsSscfCC`¥6÷WB÷WBFòFR&VÂöæW2âôª
Taking the third line for this example, and reversing it gives:
¦ àfEÓ¤¥Vóò6æ”&öò¢3GG
Decode using base64decode.org, using the UTF-16 character set gives 籅竜:
Next plugging this into Google Translate gives:
Doing this for all lines which start with GG3, produces the following words:
Fan
Crime
DRAGON
it’s easy
👅🏽
Sugar Cane
Basically There Then
Once I’d realized that it was a primarily text based code, I revisited 2–12 “Fully encrypted Guardian contact”. Check the BIP39 list and no guardian, but sure enough, there’s Guard.
Putting what I found at that point gave me:
1. Guilt
2. Guard
3. Fan
4. Crime
5. Dragon
6. Easy
7. Tongue
8. Sugar
9. ?
10. ?
11. ?
12. Sight
TREE FIDDY! Or Just Three
So, only 3 to go.
As the only way to message a seed phrase in code is in the correct order (or it would be impossible to solve). Next stop was to look through the codes in between the big one (Ref 1.4), and the buy comp message (Ref 1.5).
There were a few, some messages referring to external events, Alex Hern, Guardian article and general encouragement. However in the mix was the following:
(Ref 1.6)
If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far, go together.
Anti calls
https://etherscan.io/tx/0x5d069302d46f19cf61441fd9603fed7611c8f94dc169ef5e80341dbf32242d56
Now this message was a reference to the new TG, set up by An_Epitaph (who subsequently expertly paperhanded its’ ownership) after the commotion caused by THE YOUNG HERN’s arrival. Along with the following saying –
“If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far, go together”
A bit of googling revealed that this was not a quote from Fast 27 — The Fastestest, but in fact an African Proverb. Interestingly, it seems that this often quoted in two ways, one ending in “with others”, and the other, ending in “together”.
Dev picked together, check the BIP39 word list, together is there, others is not. Yay seed phrase word #9!
Next came a Milarepa quote (Ref1.7)
I need nothing. I seek nothing. I desire. Good thing about this message is it can t be deleted.
https://etherscan.io/tx/0xfc6d30ab5acc8723ed93e1ca0401d076bc71d3c5ac1ef0366d824333adbbe466
At first I thought it was just a reference to the Dev’s identity. But then copying and pasting into google isn’t that hard, so gave it a whirl. Turns out the full quote is –
“I need nothing. I seek nothing. I desire nothing”
Dev made a comment about deletion, right after a quote with a deleted word? As is frequently said in the Tsuka TG, there are no coincidences! Quick look at the BIP39 word list again, and nothing (the word) is there. Word #10
At this point I’m on a role, but it gets a little tricky. Because I’m focusing on text.
Enter the Sun Tzu message (Ref 1.8)
Do not repeat the tacties
which have gained you
one victory, but let your
methods be regulated
by the infinite variety
of circumstances.
https://etherscan.io/tx/0x6f747eb2b4de76502ffd6671e6c9fa0bc512c8ce0610f4c7d13e943cd3f8c87f
Now this one was a little trickier, I focused on tactics, due to it being misspelt. Not a seed phrase word. Googled the phrase, no missing words, no different versions, not quoted from anywhere else. But, it did have a reference number. 6.28. Checked the word list, word 628 is Example.
Bye Bye Wallet, Hello WalletS
The last one wasn’t quite in line with the others, but figured I’d give it a go. Opened up Trust Wallet, plugged in all the words, and the button lights up! Then shortly after pressing it, the app freezes, tweaks out, and promptly forgets there were ever any wallets connected to it. Yay….
Too excited to care about what just happened, I fired up Zerion, went to import wallets and plugged them all in again. Button lights up, I press it, seems to work this time but a little slow. Then the next shock happens. It doesn’t pull up a wallet. It asks me which wallet I want to import out of a list of 100! (The max Zerion can handle)
WTF there’s supposed to be 555!
So at this point, it’s important to understand what happened after the first load of wallets rocked up, and tried to break my phone. 100 wallet addresses, along with zero balances and no transaction history were pulled through b y Zerion from the seed phrase. This led to the assumption that all of these wallets were already generated. Unless someone can explain to me otherwise, I believe this to be accurate. Now, once it became clear that there wasn’t a wallet with piles of money in it, I theorised that something needs to then be done with the wallets to find “the solution”. As time has passed since this point, I believe this theory to be correct because we would know by now if discovering the wallets was the actual solution.
Because the maximum wallet quantity per group that Zerion can handle is 100, I had to assume that there were more wallets already created. And that the token we were looking for, or the transaction history we needed to find, or whatever, was in one of those wallets. So after some discussion in the TG, the next best option was to use the Metamask extension to pull through all the wallets. So with the help of a macro this was done over the course of a view nights. Credit to Slumb3r for the Metamask suggestion and the macro idea and software!
Now what is important to note here, when using this method, it does mean that I have no idea if the wallet address is being pulled through as it already exists, or if it has just been generated. Initially we thought that Metamask could handle 200 wallets, so that was the goal, then it carried on going. The only “clue” we have had that directly links to a wallet, is the image of a wallet with a balance of over $155m. The time that the screenshot was taken, was 5:55. As such I semi-arbitrarily picked that number.
Until now, no wallets with previous transaction history, or with a pot of gold, have been found. So the current theory being worked on is that some sort of interaction is required from a particular, or a set of particular wallets. Whether it is putting some tokens in it, transferring tokens from there to somewhere else. Or whatever. It is because of this that it was important to pull through 555 wallets. As we try and work out which wallet/s is/are the key wallets, we don’t want to be referencing a shorter list that does not have the key wallet on it.
If there were already 555 wallets created then fine, if there was actually only 150, and I have generated an extra 405 wallets, then also fine. We will still be able to get to the answer.
So What Now?
The short answer to this question is; yea I’m not sure. Ultimately, we now have a big list of wallets. I found these using clues in messages which were all sent in May. So that means there may well be heaps of clues in the June and July messages. The last line in (Ref 1.4) is also still unsolved.
The solution may be in there somewhere. The more eyes on this problem, the more likely we will be able to solve it faster. It may even be that “the solution”, is actually to get a portion of the Tsuka community to work collaboratively towards solving this, and that the entire thing is an exercise in decentralised community building. Or maybe we have to put 1 USDC in wallet “x”. Or we need to do something else.
@S1rBob_ Twitter