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This is a treasure chest: it contains the only copy of the private key to an ETH wallet, stamped into a sheet of metal. Over time, we will release clues about the location of this chest. Here is the first one: it's buried somewhere in the Texas Hill Country.
So what's in the wallet? To start, we've put a 1/1 NFT treasure inside, created by Cabin DAO collaborators @DugDaniels and @mel_being:
But what makes this treasure chest special is that, even though it's already buried, you can still add things into it. Think of it like contributing to a time capsule. Our hope is that one day in the future it will contain a gold mine of old NFTs and tokens and will lead to great adventures among treasure hunters.
Feel free to deposit anything you'd like into the treasure chest at this address:
The treasure chest is also accessible at buriedtreasure.eth (the ENS domain is registered for the next 100 years; hopefully someone finds it by then).
To get the game kicked off, you can become a Treasure Hunter by collecting this NFT (also made by @DugDaniels and @mel_being):
Some clues will be released publicly. Others may be token-gated for Treasure Hunters. Proceeds from the sale of the Treasure Hunter NFTs will be split: 50% of the ETH will be deposited directly into the treasure chest, and the other 50% will go to Cabin DAO to support the Creator Cabins residency program & the artists that made this project possible.
Happy hunting!
Who knows where the treasure chest is buried?
Just me, Jonathan Hillis. I went to great lengths to leave no trace of where I buried it & I will tell no one where it is.
How long will the treasure chest last?
Until someone finds it, the stamped metal plate corrodes, or ETH ceases to exist, whichever comes first.
Why didn't you use a hardware wallet?
Common hardware wallets rely on a USB connection and additional layers of abstraction from the underlying wallet. The goal of this project was to make a treasure chest with the greatest chance of surviving for a very long time. Hardware wallets are great, but you can't beat keys stamped directly on metal for longevity.
Why didn't you use a BIP-39 seed phrase as the password?
I wanted to rely on as few protocols as possible, provide the most direct and root-level access to the wallet, and avoid accidentally remembering words from the seed phrase. To accomplish this, I generated the ETH address and public/private keys using a random seed, stamped them into a piece of metal by hand, and saved no other records.
Why did you register the buriedtreasure.eth domain and then assign control to the chest's wallet, instead of just having the chest's wallet register the ENS address directly?
To maintain a maniacal level of security. Registering the ENS domain directly using the wallet would have required using wallet software, a security risk I didn't want to take. This trades off slightly worse security for the ENS domain buriedtreasure.eth in order to maintain the strictest security for the underlying wallet: 0x9293db81d208814cB7F23F4DeDeEd0dBEc35D1A0. There is no possible way for anyone (including me!) to access the contents held at this address without finding the treasure chest.
Jonathan Hillis