ASSAY OFFICE №24

Your answer is the key

Five vaults, funded in PAXG. Nothing to join, nobody to ask.

A puzzle, backed by physical gold

Each vault is a question. Its answer, hashed once, is a private key, and that key holds gold. Nothing gets awarded here. You derive it or you don't.

No account

Nothing to join and no email. Everything needed is already on the page.

Real gold

Funded vaults are live addresses holding PAXG. Balances are public. Go check.

No gatekeeper

Answers go nowhere near a server. Keys get derived offline, on your own machine.

Free

No purchase, ever. Donations feed the pot and stop there.

THE LADDER

Five vaults, ten karat to twenty-four

Fineness rises with difficulty. So does the weight inside.

PAXGGOLD ON THE BOARD · ON-CHAIN
/14MARKS CRACKED · GLOBAL
LAST CRACK
The assay board: every mark and vault, its model, status, difficulty, and reward
MARKMODELSTATUSHARDNESSREWARDFIRST CRACK
Reading the ledger…

Every count here is real, or honestly zero. Balances read live from chain.

HOW A KEY IS MADE

Guess. Hash. Fit. Sweep.

A candidate answer becomes an address. Only an exact fit opens anything.

HOW IT WORKS · example grainsTUMBLERSLUICESTENCILWASHTHE KEY3fa2c19b04dea8c35b60e2f1

THE SLUICE

Grains are candidate answers. The stencil is the vault's own address. One grain fits, and that grain is the key.

STENCIL
the vault's public address, published on its page
RULE
key = SHA-256(answer) · address must match
PROOF
the on-chain sweep. No server, no gatekeeper
STATUS
NO VAULT OPEN YET
Verify on the board

Start at ten karat

Lowest vault, easiest question. Nothing to sign.

Papers

Assay Papers

Source documents. Exact bytes matter.

Open

Derivation Notes

Answer to address, step by step.

Read

Vault balances are public and read live from chain.

View on Etherscan ↗

VERIFY THE GOLD

Vault lookup

Every funded vault is an address anyone can inspect. Balance and history are public, and none of it is ours to edit.

Check a vault

Ethereum mainnet only.

Why Aurum Hunt

Aurum HuntLotteryGiveawayAirdropBitcoin puzzle
Cost to enterNoneTicket priceNoneGasNone
AccountNoneRequiredRequiredWalletNone
Winner picked byNobodyDrawSponsorSnapshotNobody
Prize held byVaultOperatorSponsorTreasuryVault
VerifiableOn-chainAuditedRarelyOn-chainOn-chain
How you claimDerive and sweepPresent ticketWaitClaimDerive and sweep

Questions

What is a vault?

A funded Ethereum address whose private key is the SHA-256 of one exact string.

How does an answer become a key?

Encode it as UTF-8, hash once with SHA-256, treat the digest as a secp256k1 private key. Derive the address and compare. Use printf, not echo, and leave off the trailing newline.

Who holds the keys?

Assay office holds them too, until a vault is swept. Said plainly so nobody is surprised.

Is any of this free?

All of it. No purchase, no ticket, no fee.

What happens to a donation?

It becomes prize. There are no refunds.

Why do the text files look strange?

Because they are evidence, not prose. Count what is there.