The riddle with a prize of 7 ETH, placed in the Warsaw metro, was solved by one of the community members. The authors of the riddle were organizers of events for blockchain developers.
In mid-November, an advertisement was placed in the metro station of the Polish capital calling for solving the riddle and getting 7 ETH. According to the organizers of the competition, the puzzle was successfully solved, and the user received a prize.
On November 16, advertisements in English featuring Ethereum appeared at metro stations in Warsaw. The posters read: “Solve the riddle, get a reward.” At the same time, cryptic messages began to appear on the 0xPoland Twitter account, and later – tips. According to the organizers, the first clue was hidden in the Ethereum contract code itself. The contestants had to call the “Solve” function and use the secret phrase as a parameter to withdraw money.
The first clue was posted three days later: “Tip: ^ [A-Z]. *.”, Which implied that the secret message must start with a capital letter and end with a period, and “0x01ccfbfc” is part of the checksum of the solution. The image published along with the recording also contained the following phrase: “Bring my light, light by my side, light of the burning tower”. This is a quote from the song “Into the dark forest” by Elffor. Thus, the first part of the secret phrase was “Into the dark forest”.
On November 23, 0xPoland tweeted another tip with the words: “The answer to the main question of life, the Universe and all that” and a long string of characters. The first phrase was an allusion to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – the answer was “42”. Some programming skills were required to decipher the character string. After all, the second part of the passphrase was “Down the rabbit hole.”
The third and final clue was published on November 26 in the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, both online and in print. The organizers commented on this step:
“We decided to place an ad in a Polish newspaper. This is much more difficult than it sounds! Quite a few daily newspapers turned down our ad because they could not understand the concept of the puzzle and chose to play it safe. ”
The ad said, “You’ve come a long way. I have one last clue. Call me as soon as possible. ” The ad included a phone number that redirected users to a pre-recorded message containing the missing elements of the full passphrase. Ultimately, the winner had to enter the phrase “With 0xPoland. Into the dark forest. Down the rabbit hole. Where adventure awaits “.
After the advertisement was published, the winner was not long in coming. The organizers write:
“Twenty-one minutes after the post on Twitter with the page number of the newspaper where the tip was posted, we recorded a winning transaction. The correct hash was tied to the smart contract, and three minutes later, the puzzle-solving transaction was confirmed. A few hours later, the anonymous winner transferred the earned 7 ETH to his wallet, ”notes 0xPoland.
According to the organizers, in this way they wanted to “cheer up” Polish cryptocurrency enthusiasts.
“We have been closely following the Polish Ethereum developer community and felt this competition could add a thrill to them! We also wanted to offer developers a place where they can develop their skills and join us in building a decentralized finance infrastructure. ”
The organizers said that 0xPoland is the name of a series of meetings, seminars and hackathons for blockchain developers. The first event is scheduled for December 8th.
