Bitaps

Who this is

Bitaps runs a block explorer at bitaps.com and writes Bitcoin libraries: pybtc in Python, jsbtc in JavaScript, both GPL, both with their own Shamir secret sharing. The mnemonic challenge is what happens when a library author is confident. Take a 12 word mnemonic, split it 3 of 5, publish two shares and 1 BTC, and see if anyone can do it with two.

Nobody has, as of this writing. The address has been topped up three times since 2020, which is a quiet way of saying the offer stands.

What the record says

The GitHub organisation is the one place that lists the software, so it's the source for that fact. The challenge page is the source for the rest: the shares, the 1 BTC, and the 2021 reframing as a bug bounty with a tier for implementation bugs. The page carries no publication date, so neither fact does. The funding date lives on the record's transaction and the ZeroNights talk is the page's own account.

No person is on the record. The package metadata names an author, and the wiki behind this dataset knows the name, but nothing Bitaps publishes about the challenge does. The record follows what's published.

The record

static readonly author = party("Bitaps", {
  key: "bitaps",
  kind: PartyKind.Organization,
  about: "The team behind the bitaps.com block explorer and the pybtc and jsbtc libraries …",
  profiles: [
    profile("website", "https://bitaps.com"),
    profile("github", "https://github.com/bitaps-com"),
  ],
  facts: [
    fact("Maintains pybtc and jsbtc, Bitcoin libraries in Python and JavaScript under GPL-3.0, …", "https://github.com/bitaps-com"),
    fact("Published two of the five Shamir shares of a 12 word mnemonic and pays 1 BTC …", "https://bitaps.com/mnemonic/challenge"),
    fact("Turned the puzzle into a bug bounty in 2021: …", "https://bitaps.com/mnemonic/challenge"),
  ],
});