"WE ARE 256, WE ARE 1" is an invitation to a Discord-based puzzle game with the promise of a money prize of unspecified value in Round 10.
It is written as a short mystery story/cult invitation/tabletop RPG with some mysterious Braille Unicode art cabal symbols thrown in, nice work, e.g. the first one:
 ⣤⡀⠀⠀⠠⣤⠀⠀⠀⠀⣤⠀⠀⢠⡄⠀⠀⣤⠀⠀⠀⠀⣤⠄⠀⠀⢀⣤⠀
⠀⠘⢷⣄⠀⠀⠹⣧⡀⠀⠀⢸⡆⠀⢸⡇⠀⢰⡇⠀⠀⢀⣼⠏⠀⠀⣠⡾⠃⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠙⢷⣄⠀⠘⢷⡄⠀⠘⣷⠀⠘⠃⠀⣼⠇⠀⢠⡾⠃⠀⣠⡾⠋⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠻⣦⣀⠀⠻⣧⡀⠈⢿⡄⠀⢿⠄⢀⡀⠠⡿⠀⢠⡿⠁⢀⣼⠟⠀⣀⣴⠟⠀
⠀⠀⠈⠙⢶⣄⠈⠻⣦⡈⢿⡄⠈⢠⣿⣿⡄⠁⢠⡿⢁⣴⠟⠁⣠⡶⠋⠁⠀⠀
⠀⣀⣀⠀⠀⠈⠛⢦⣈⣿⣄⠃⣠⣿⣿⣿⣿⣄⠘⣠⣿⣁⡴⠛⠁⠀⠀⣀⣀⠀
⠀⠈⠙⠛⠷⢦⣤⣀⡉⠻⠋⣰⣿⡿⠿⠿⢿⣿⣆⠙⠟⢉⣀⣤⡴⠾⠛⠋⠁⠀
⠀⢶⣦⣤⣤⣤⣈⣉⣛⠃⢀⣡⡄⢀⡤⠤⠀⢠⣌⡀⠘⣛⣉⣁⣤⣤⣤⣴⡶⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣉⣉⡉⠁⢰⣿⣿⣇⠸⠀⠀⠀⣸⣿⣿⡆⠈⢉⣉⣉⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠛⠛⠉⠉⢉⠉⢁⣤⣈⠛⠻⠿⠷⣤⣤⠾⠿⠟⠛⣁⣤⡈⠉⡉⠉⠉⠛⠛⠀
⠀⣠⣤⡶⠞⠋⢠⣾⣿⣿⣿⣶⣶⣤⣤⣤⣤⣶⣶⣿⣿⣿⣷⡄⠙⠳⢶⣤⣄⠀
⠀⠉⠀⣠⠀⢠⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄⠀⣄⠀⠉⠀
⠀⢀⣠⡾⠋⣠⠞⠁⣰⡟⠁⢸⡏⠀⢸⡇⠀⢹⡇⠈⢻⣆⠈⠳⣄⠙⢷⣄⡀⠀
⠀⠛⠋⠀⠚⠋⠀⠐⠛⠀⠀⠚⠀⠀⠘⠃⠀⠀⠓⠀⠀⠛⠂⠀⠙⠓⠀⠙⠛⠀
The prize promise is:
Amidst the labyrinthine trials, the ultimate test lies in Round 10, where grand prize money riddles await the most skilled and dedicated participants.
There may also be a pay to win mechanic which is perhaps how the scam works:
In this cryptic journey, the number of 256 Ordinals held becomes a key determinant of progress. Those who hold a higher number of Ordinals, standing as sentinels of wisdom, enjoy an edge over others. They are safeguarded from regressing beyond their current round, their position secured by the strength of their holdings.
However, for those who possess fewer Ordinals, a different fate may await. Purges, shrouded in mystery, can demote participants to lower rounds, challenging them to rise again through determination and resolve. The path to enlightenment demands resilience and the tenacity to overcome setbacks.
Finally further down we see some join instructions:
V. Whitelist Access and Discord Roles
And finally they give concrete join instructions at:
IX. Join the Illuminated Ones
SW4gdGhlIGhhbGxvd2VkIGNoYW1iZXJzIG9mIDI1NiwgYSBzZWxlY3QgZ3JvdXAgZW1lcmdlcyBmcm9tIHRoZSBkZXB ... XBsZXMgb2YgQml0Y29pbiByZWlnbiBzdXByZW1lLg==
Removing the spaces it is just Base64:
xsel -b | tr -d ' ' | base64 -d
giving:
In the hallowed chambers of 256, a select group emerges from the depths of knowledge and mastery. As we ascend through the challenging rounds and unravel the enigmas that lie within, a council of visionaries begins to take shape. These luminaries, the Illuminated Ones, are the chosen few who have delved deepest into the mysteries, unlocking the secrets that bind our shared destiny.
To join the ranks of the Illuminated Ones is to embrace the challenge laid before us. It requires unwavering determination, relentless pursuit of knowledge, and an insatiable curiosity that drives us to unlock the hidden depths of the Watch Tower. As we decode the cryptic puzzles and navigate the labyrinthine maze, we become catalysts of change, shaping the very fabric of our collective future.
Only the smartest, the most intrepid, and the boldest souls will find themselves welcomed into this secret council. They are the ones who have traversed the treacherous terrain, tested their mettle, and emerged triumphant. With each step forward, they gain insights and wisdom that have the power to reshape the very landscape of the digital realm.
Curious and courageous souls are invited to join the ranks of the Illuminated Ones. Those who dare to challenge the boundaries of what is known and venture into the realm of the unknown are the ones who will find their rightful place among the visionaries and leaders of the 256 community. Together, we wield the power to shape our shared destiny, to create a future where decentralization, privacy, and the principles of Bitcoin reign supreme.
so perhaps there is a hidden message in that text to actually access the Discord?
This is the collection on Magic Eden: magiceden.io/ja/ordinals/marketplace/256, which contains links:
Consider a real valued function of three variables:
Its Laplacian can be written as:
It is common to just omit the variables of the function, so we tend to just say:
or equivalently when referring just to the operator:
LaTeX by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Revolutionary for its time, and a big part of Ciro's Enlightenment.
But too insane, and did not keep up with internet age, and so Ciro wants to kill it now.
Skills by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Non-technical skills were moved to: Ciro Santilli's skills.
This has not been updated since 2016 after Ciro got a job, because it is too hard to put a number on any skill.
www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/01/12/taproot-wizards-bitcoin-ordinals-project-that-raised-75m-to-sell-quantum-cats-collection/:
Taproot Wizards, Bitcoin Ordinals Project That Raised $7.5M, to Sell 'Quantum Cats' Collection"
OMG if only the worlds wouldn't invest in such useless crap... it would probably be a better and more boring world.
The Horrible Horrendous Terrible Tremendous Mining Pool inscribed a few cute Coinbase messages during their operation in 2012-2013.
Many of their messages also mention SockThing, which was part of their mining infrastructure:
Starting from their very first ASCII transaction on block 197602 (2012-09-07), there is what seems to be a poem spread across several transactions. Some of the lines are repeated, presumably because they didn't update the current line to a new line and so mined the same thing multiple times:
I am a pretty princess
covered in mud and blood
water with stuff in it
like everything else that wiggles or jiggles
screaming might not be your waY
see no reason to operate otherwise since
came into the world naked, wet and screaming
but silence will never be mine
until I am dead
but the smell will also give that away
gather all my things
load them in a big boat
airlift that to Kansas
and light it on fire
drop it from 7,000 feet
then railgun my corpse straight down
The sentences are not very coherent together, perhaps this is because lines were chosen by different miners one at a time.
Bitcoin addresses are by convention expressed in Base58, which is a human readable binary-to-text encoding invented by Bitcoin.
It is a bit like Base64, but obsessed with eliminating characters that look like one another in popular but stupid fonts like capital "I" and lower case ell "l". As such, any embedded text is rather obfuscated due to this limitations, and people often resort to leet-like replacements such as '1' to represent 'I'.
This seems to be one of the earliest strategies used to encode messages into the Bitcoin blockchain. The first known example appears in 2011. Then starting November 2011, a large number of messages were inscribed n short successsion, presumably by a single person or small group.
The interest in Base58 encoding might have initially arisen with people's desire to have "vanity addresses", that is Bitcoin addresses that have real words in them, much like vanity plates or vanity numbers. Such addresses with long words in them are hard to find while keeping the address spendable, because they have to correspond to a private key. An extreme notable example is:which contains the awkward 13 letter word:
embarrassable
in it. TODO: proof that it is pendable?
Perhaps inspired by this, some people also decided to use Base58 addresses as a way to create more general unspendable inscriptions, even even though the method is much more clumsy and complicated than P2FKHS. There is however a certain art to working under limitations.
Figure 1.
Total burn addresses as a function of time found by Bitcoin Burn Addresses: Unveiling the Permanent Losses and Their Underlying Causes
. Although it is not solely focused on inscriptions and may also contain functional burn addresses, it is likely that the methods of Khatib/Legout capture the overall trend of base58 inscription counts.
These messages were originally found with: github.com/cirosantilli/bitcoin-inscription-indexer#payload-size-out-utxo-2vals which tracks the largest transactions with unspent outputs.
Bitcoin Burn Addresses: Unveiling the Permanent Losses and Their Underlying Causes later revealed many new ones.
Finding Base58 messages is intrinsically hard for a few reasons
The interesting following transactions contain base58 encoded messages on addresses, sorted chronologically, and heighlighted either due to their earliness or historical or artistic quality:
Related:
If Ciro Santilli were to write a book about quantum mechanics as of 2020 (before OurBigBook.com went live), he would upload an OurBigBook Markup website to GitHub Pages.
But there is one major problem with that: the entry barrier for new contributors is very large.
If they submit a pull request, Ciro has to review it, otherwise, no one will ever see it.
Our amazing website would allow the reader to add his own example of, say, The uncertainty principle, whenever they wants, under the appropriate section.
Then, people who want to learn more about it, would click on the "defined tag" by the article, and our amazing analytics would point them to the best such articles.
Don't like this very much, but if it's the only way...
Maybe focus on job ads like Stack Overflow.
Then:
  • like YouTube, pay creators proportionally to views/metrics
  • paid subscription to remove ads from site
Transactions such as tx fe37c7eee73be5fda91068dbe0eb74a68495a3fc7185712b8417032db7fc9c5e (2015-01-15) starting with
U2FsdGVkX1/4iSjLxQ5epo8eRSCOQLGgAsn1CucGii27k8ZyC7Jz6wxhYcevVmxi
6Q4ZFN04WDN0UhKqYardgQf26oeBMURupduDd0ZozxlgMrBkFOCaARqU7RABVWDO
/ruPUcOY0VC8p4lrMNqSdqvN7y6OWwOSH3c0duumZfFNZs9+BbtKCxtaqR5+RkUI
are Base64 encoded. Running them through base64 -d leads to starting output bytes Salted__ which as mentioned at security.stackexchange.com/questions/124312/decrypting-binary-code-from-a-base64-string is OpenSSL encrypted data. So hwerever we see the start:
U2FsdGVkX1/
we might as well give up. That string appears 26 times in our data currently, between 6c091e6152b83ec0df8d0d87c7c5f3da72a3328ed3a5d91768ba0ab899c16b9d (2014-09-28) and 84189c82995db355e92e37f8cfe8a9274e9a5d157f1f1658067672e707469a09 (2019-07-06)
The following via cryptograffiti.info get marked by file as "openssl enc'd data with salted password, Base64 encoded":
  • ad3d8a0a5d57114b1780341cb5104284f029bb01b1b3558f7c7b9ce51eb67e18
  • 1cd0c631f444d664601468f644b70e0166019a54d8678de51310139b6c8b2bd7
  • ccc3fb2c9cb1c640b76645a8658693066fd63433ab17c318691ad5bd62601c0e
  • e6eb0cb8268a9b3d012d2957b32d4b28ccc3317593f54f4bfe4b387326588bd2
  • c40e322b198b715accc4a67fad244ed131b8cef0785070e06d10d56c4ab389f2
  • 37a261ac6dbf59e3c9673a22028bcdbdd08926a9d32134ab8fba0897f6dcd196
  • f1aa516fe00ec2156f16fcb9da422f6cbcd141e8e58c895d8bc37b4ad2fd714e
  • 7faf29c7dd7d9cc6d099c262f7ec7edd7fc768276482ad66ceefdd814f1d38ab
  • 69cac244051661cc0b8b08905af5ab312a1282b68c932e5d1e3c46ad47ff0f7a
  • 1773c39f844951b7169dc34aa0c72aa7b43cae6a103ed1223527ef0f4deec2a9
  • b1d4bf3fc46e63c995ad4299f3576340077bc810dfa5c502d1c068460d54bc98
  • a52625837741902e1dd24de3dbd3b948d6e0907ad3fc957c13cdf53fa2c3b9ac
  • 4ca742813eaccef009e24e92150dda06540c2ac81782f1569b1ebb3179a413d2
  • 6c3bab5fc6e6352c62a16ab0f47394845aa41a2c0b25e1a1073a4aeac150e03d
  • 20b8feef3d293a0dd79e3c169fceb1217465502a523acbab903a7eb0cd183709
  • b7863215b99567bc9e71155b13f3c5f26d15eac52493ee2e834129460ffd2aec
  • 2c8961a64bb11d5855790085f51007273467f7ef862137215c9f1d958dcb6c57
  • bed542957bdd8f644a4fcd671a8c66a5cc5d6168f9fa60d37177703e77558eee
  • 3e45af9d828754d5a38c86636a070610f6e828482718c4a597d272d41a3e31fa
  • a13af4817e85cacce3cfb445001e2fb2f56cdc30f78348fd2580bf8f4c84dc55
  • 87a10f6bc65a08067b2544e46be00d4af62c0cfed3ae0b165d5eedaff09d81da
  • ef55826befabbe9dcd44d87fc385d600dd4c4cba3346cde53d8c591960e9b4dc
  • 5d30f63131dcf2b4d001b4ab530e18cc6ff8ffd16cade055ff4587a59b84e420
  • 8a75514829b6e30b9fea434eef77b1589ff3f4bdfc0056bd087efbfb8314eb59
  • e2be1062c9d43cc6ed43de6f7a40c728d2d92ed0325abde24ff3300cf3ae136a
  • 8fe5c2679237e36c74fda04bb083f732c4afdd06af81121b1d7b4d5bd677135f
  • 7f099f094d8d51105d8655253d45ebddf1c88b9e138c302a65d2878a237e620c
  • 0fc4b3a305e2a7faa2e7d9c2f23d23d626e9e75f1f2a37133f283334b314645b
  • 933b321e7b7144ed5e4e1750f944be9ed10293633d9b288bf05febdeb9dc40a3
  • 6215486bc024dea7991b142e50e111c4063e1db4a867514612b8e794b8ef5635
  • fc0613e11269962d97373b10e310f451fb76c7bb477ba1afb45773c44851e9ed
  • ab51d2c037b4625394c68706da83c26bad751018d2a3e377a51988bd8ee18647
  • 7ca9b337172f4feff67a0ecbfbd76798265e08c6ebe989a319883c695d756247
  • 0f0b477e456dcf286d7262497bcd5b3b6a3ce89f81761c2f59ff702539ab6183
  • a320152fd59426c8853dd781db9d682f89755953b39a653f9e9c9628a5fce7fb
  • e96221da774fb52d24dda1b83b14c99085eb4befac64691722c56eb750562d68
  • a7a5ca68dd340dd42bd5c91e0febe68e5fd2fb993da2992661183eaafe8ad89e
  • 64e9d95e2333cfd155506199c8d926649e63a98dbc83c1221b8dd1580937b942
blockchain.news/news/mysterious-bitcoin-inscriptions-a-puzzle-in-raw-binary-data mentions a huge 9 MB Ordinal ruleset inscription that no-one managed to decode, and so people suspect is encrypted data. Seems to be split across transactions, starting at fed7de7fb75a3fe3c1acbbd8e19a4c540fb368474c8834e4ddb1d5bab764a767
Local server by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Server run on the current machine. That's how all websites are developed and born!
In this section we document events that led to a large number of thematically related messages being added to the chain e.g. referencing some current event that happened, as opposed to the media encoding/type like images and text sections.
The "Hitler did nothing wrong" meme[ref] is repeated several times, e.g.: tx 41967a7d75e9e1ca8c142a45ce29ea08b451a3b55c3e33538f5cc8a389ec66ab (2015-07-20):
EW Hitler did nothing wrong.
This one is also an Eternity Wall message. The message had also been previously Base58 encoded at address 1HitLerDidNothingWrongggggghJewfv in two different instances:
Brazil:
  • tx 1c05bb7c0a8c9498d33a1e6d4a91bbb4c651daa5ea5a21aa5c8c600d3300b8bb Viva Brazil's Impeachment!
  • tx 105fb3a0be8ab50bfa36012e0319a752dee39702cb44f3904cf423eb20367d57 contains a misogenous joke:
    A mulher feia so tem uma coisa a oferecer,uma boa foda(Diego Silva de Oliveira)
    which translates to:
    Ugly women only have one thing to offer, a good fuck
    It is attributed to Diego Silva de Oliveira, possibly this football player: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_Silva_(footballer,_born_1990)
  • c72dc315a5504362d01f2dcdfe77826d14a9eb3411b83edd7aa782e95e4a7794 via cryptograffiti.info:
    NÓS DISSEMOS SIM
    AGÊNCIA TRANSITIVA 2015
    
    Nota pública de reconhecimento do Acordo Reconformado, assinado pela Agência Transitiva e
    pela Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, em 22 de Abril de 2015.
    
    #ENCRUZILHADA
    EAV PARQUE LAGE
    22.04.2015
  • 1c05bb7c0a8c9498d33a1e6d4a91bbb4c651daa5ea5a21aa5c8c600d3300b8bb via cryptograffiti.info:
    Viva Brazil's Impeachment!
Our indexer does not handle UTF-8, here's a collection of some UTF-8 messages we've stumbled upon somewhat randomly:
Arabic:
  • 7eb561f2139761064de20033fa4843f1f3e1a9551268704b36f84d94e66fd91a
    يا سلم!
    شعرك جميل
    و عينيك حلوة
    انا عطشان
    اِروني من عينيك
    O peace!
    Your hair is beautiful
    And your eyes are beautiful
    I'm thirsty
    Show me from your eyes
  • b7376cae03b88392e5fd0292bcb43105386fbb534fc9be68c1e3d0b8f39e5ba4 via cryptograffiti.info
    sjalom, salaam, peace!
    الدين
  • 7a898b7e6b2145f4f887e1ff890d0b613e3008fbe350aa92662735e3acd0c0bc
    هذه رسالة من المستقبل
    إلى الماضي ...
    الحياة صعبة في المستقبل
    رعاية العالم
    وتحمل المسؤولية
    /y
    This is a message from the future
    To the past...
    Life is difficult in the future
    Caring for the world
    And take responsibility
    /y
Russian:
  • 1dcd62c922eb1ddbc1f58615b6271d64736bf55e83408cef02a7d0ac6707e423 via cryptograffiti.info
    А на Земле Быть Добру!
    And on Earth To Be Good!
  • 596cc6e905a5fc8248cf59198a19ce5070228b302a9f3a993197e2c87ddcaf14 via cryptograffiti.info
    Книга Вечно Живущих открыта
    The Book of the Ever-Living is open
  • 596cc6e905a5fc8248cf59198a19ce5070228b302a9f3a993197e2c87ddcaf14 via cryptograffiti.info
    Это тест, сука блять.
    This is a test, motherfucker.
  • ed56ef68ccbfb1d47bc159fb62fab6807ee4d7363d0ad4cded2e922a5b47362e via cryptograffiti.info
    Путин хуйло лалалалалалалалалал
    Putin sucks lalalalalalalalala
Chinese:
Japanese:
  • ac2ad7c15162a8e461387b0d0d681bb5f81f2db1138b8f200b81bbc585bd0b8f via cryptograffiti.info:
    モキーのフラッシュバン許すな
    Don't forgive Moky's flashbang
Hebrew:
  • 0b32736592ce7abdd4d971bc4591544e1610ff51f498c9a14a6ba34a3abcad5d via cryptograffiti.info
    חתימה טובה לכולם בכלל ולחברי ביטקוין ישראלי בפרט.
    A good signature for everyone in general and Israeli Bitcoin members in particular.
  • d7b80c8fefc88cc3f06d74f8496e2dc6f44b5f5f0a59f9ba1ba27266848a8666 via cryptograffiti.info contains what appears to be UTF-8 Hebrew text on my terminal, but Google Translate couldn't translate it, so we are unsure.
For now we are going to keep this site porn-free and only link to prevent bad things from happening, as it might violate GitHub porn policy depending on how it is hosted, and Google may dislike it. Video "What is more obscene: sex or war? scene from The People vs. Larry Flynt".
If illegal porn were to ever be found, we would be unable to acknowledge that, and would just have to silently remove it. Of course, the reproducible nature of Bitcoin Inscription Indexer means that anyone who regenerates the data would immediately see such entries in the diff.
Another issue is that it can be quite hard to determine if porn is legal or illegal, e.g. it can be hard to distinguish legal an illegal ages or revenge vs consensual porn, especially at the low resolutions that you may expect to find embedded in the blockchain. We are generally going to be quite strict about this, and in case of uncertainty on porn legality we will censor first.
OK the list:
4c903a377addab7c1e35a685d3dabc664199e406374b1e5ce2fc59e78fb5b754.gif

Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project

Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
We have two killer features:
  1. topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculus
    Articles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
    • a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
    • a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
    This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
    Figure 1.
    Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page
    . View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative
  2. local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:
    This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
    Figure 5. . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.
    Video 3.
    Edit locally and publish demo
    . Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact