Fred Energy Private Key Hunt — Solved

3 min readJun 8, 2020

Hi! This is a write-up on the Fred Energy private keys hunt. The puzzle has already been solved and all credit goes to the solvers!

SUMMARY

Announcement Date: May 20, 2020 on Twitter
Link: https://twitter.com/energy_fred/status/1263101022177644544?s=20
Prize: 2,000,000 FRED + 500 XLM per address

Address 1: GAZVICU5BAPDS3GL7CJ57W6HD5W43MXCMVET73PHC7S4IKR5R23MPRUD
PK: SDGWIAITHC3WXVQANZJEPFHHYLZHROVTZUH2PJCVLDRFY22OSUTBM4TO
                                    ~Solved by Zoren X (May 23,2020)Address 2: GAM3T5YQ4KAABSKZX22MFVVKITTBKQ3EDODOZV7TCG2EBN4JDFMH5VYO
PK: SBF7PKBH5W6TTCM6JSDWFUR7DMPFESYSAAVRWE6VSEOXXM45MDY3XBIF
                                   ~Solved by Akhilesh (May 23,2020)

START

This is a private key treasure hunt type of puzzle. The only task to do is find the private key for the addresses using the given hints by the admins.

Here is twitter post to the puzzle:

HINTS (by FRED)

The first place to look is at our websites, then check Google.
There are 4 parts of the keys, 2 parts each.
The keys are enclosed with **
1 part is in the website, imgur, photobucket and a well-known media platform for XLM.

INVESTIGATION

PK 1 Part 1 — Fred Energy Website

Upon the release of the first clue, hunters immediately started looking for the key on the website of FRED ENERGY. Using the clue that the keys are enclosed with **, we used the search bar to look for a ** then scrolled down and voila!

Link: https://fredenergy.org/fred-energy-token-holders-reward-scheme/
PK1 Part 1: SDGWIAITHC3WXVQANZJEPFHHYLZH

PK 1 Part 2— Imgur

Next, searching in Imgur was hard especially if the user you are looking for or the image you are looking for is not that famous. Still, by typing “Fred Energy Logo” on the search bar showed an image of Fred logo and looking at the comments, the part 2 of the PK was found!

Link: https://imgur.com/gallery/K21MV07
PK1 Part 2: ROVTZUH2PJCVLDRFY22OSUTBM4TO

PK 2 Part 1— Photobucket

Photobucket was really unresponsive at the time of the hunt that is why the part of the PK was instead given out by the admin on Telegram.

PK2 Part 1: ESYSAAVRWE6VSEOXXM45MDY3XBIF

PK 2 Part 2— XLM Media Platform

This one was really tricky. The clue that the last part is on a comment on a XLM Media was really confusing. At first, hunters looked inside Stellar’s social media accounts. But no luck.

One hunter relentlessly looked for it and even browsed every YouTube videos about XLM and stumbled upon this in of the comments!

PK2 Part 2: SBF7PKBH5W6TTCM6JSDWFUR7DMPF

SOLUTION

XLM private keys always starts with an ‘S’ so it’s easy to know the order. The only thing left is to combine the parts of the keys.

PK of Address 1: SDGWIAITHC3WXVQANZJEPFHHYLZHROVTZUH2PJCVLDRFY22OSUTBM4TO

PK of Address 2: SBF7PKBH5W6TTCM6JSDWFUR7DMPFESYSAAVRWE6VSEOXXM45MDY3XBIF

Acknowledgements

Thank you very much to the Fred Energy Team for this fun PK Hunt! Also, congrats to Zoren X and Akhilesh in solving the puzzle!

If this helped you in solving similar puzzles, you may donate to…

BTC: bc1q4jeg5uh6hsrwkys5tntnm8jckquj2vs5lvwzuq
ETH: 0x6f448878BcB39743041b229E1740BAd3E67b74A9