After the headlines: how are LunarCrush’s plans to send $1.5 million worth of BTC to the moon via private keys etched on a rover going?

We see plenty of sensational headlines around here at r/cc. So I wanted to try to catch up on what’s happened after the headline to some of these stories. This was a particularly catchy one that I can’t recall hearing about since it was announced. Let’s dig in.

The background: the headline dropped April 1, 2023 that LunarCrush was partnering with a planetary mobility firm called Lunar Outpost to deliver a Bitcoin treasure, dubbed “Nakamoto_1” (cool name choice) to the moon, on a Lunar Outpost rover that would be launching in 2023 atop a SpaceX rocket. It was problematic enough dropping on April Fool’s day - most of us didn’t know whether it was real or a prank. It turned out to be legit though, and picked up by a number of sites including Space.com and Futurism in addition to the normal crypto news sites. The bounty was declared to be 62 Bitcoin, worth about $1.5 million USD at the time. It could be claimed by whoever found a way to the rover first, as the private keys to the wallet containing the treasure would be etched on a metal plate on the rover. The idea was to spark a global academic and engineering challenge, for groups to come together and find a way to the moon - a commendable and altogether cool idea.

What’s happened since then: If you’re like me, you haven’t heard much about this since then. That’s largely because there have been no other news reports about the Nakamoto_1 or the LunarCrush bounty since April 2023. A visit to the official LunarCrush site indicates a planned Q4 2023 launch, and it’s now marketed as “the first ever interplanetary treasure hunt powered by Bitcoin-secured NFTs.” There’s no more mention of a 62 BTC prize, but rather “a trove of crypto and NFTs.” This treasure mission will be funded by the sale of NFTs: “25% of the initial sales will be used to fund the Nakamoto_1 Treasure Chest. Additionally, 25% of all secondary sale royalties will be added to the chest.” There are three levels of NFTs to be minted, with users combining lower level NFTs and burning them to obtain a higher level of NFT along the way. There were 2,513/24,000 level 1’s minted so far, 60/6,000 level 2’s created so far, and 16/2,000 Androids (final form) created so far. “All Android NFT holders get access to the token gated community, a LunarCrush Pro account, events, merch, and other benefits.”

Not a lot of concrete info on how it’s going or the exact treasure here. Let’s see what else I could find.

Lunar Outpost’s site indicates that the “2023 mission is a go” - sending a rover (the MAPP, Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform) to the lunar South Pole. It indicates a partnership with Nokia to build and test the first-ever LTE/4G network on the surface of the moon. The page specific to the mission appears out of date on the site. Nothing here about the LunarCrush project, although it links to a page where you can enter info if you’d like to explore having your business payload brought to the moon to have your brand be marketed from the lunar surface. They have a fairly active social media presence on X as “@LunarOutpostInc” that indicates the launch and mission are now on track for a January 2024 launch.

Let’s dig deeper. “@Namamoto1” is the X profile for the LunarCrush mission. It seems pretty active as well, with plenty of posts, and recently within the last week about a LunarCrush token called “$Lunr” that’s been introduced on Stacks, with 3 million Lunr already burned relating to the minting of Android NFTs.. which is a little surprising given that reportedly only 16 Androids have been created. They also have a pinned tweet with the addresses for the treasure chest going to the moon - this is what I’ve been looking for, the treasure details! Balances as follows (I mostly used Cointracker to look these up):

• BTC address (balance of $0): 1Fx21yz3U7ZKDfDpDayQR3xG3jNtvMCjBH

• DOGE address (balance of $0) DRmMcvuBmoXa5X3YuREkUmmcz3W8gMXKBV

• LTC address (balance of $0) Lbt2TC9vx9xzb6BUxhcS9Fq68eSzRFQQbQ

• STX address (I used the Stacks explorer to check. Balance of 100 STX which is ~$45 USD, and 38 NFTs): SP6R0F8CMKMTZEVDP3HMN6GZ3AZ3AJCYJPFN2VTN

• XMR address (yeah I don’t know how to look up Monero balances b/c of the whole privacy thing, but have at it): 41xmhZAaUqxhbaxLqsz3VzFayaSS2DfUwgoz7yVvkZoT2dNaELhqx6U3D4vcDRXt1hF23y87Fz9n7JqUrpb3ZnMPG6aSGBz

• ETH address ($0 balance): 0x5af729aaf429d271b29e98f73f8ae00864542947

• TEZ address ($0 balance): tz1L3CThavPMxd52v8ZFtwcELfrXHmVg1zYk

So as it stands, the current publicly observable lunar bounty is about $45 worth of STX and a bunch of STX NFTs. To be fair, as the main funding for the lunar treasure chest was to come from selling the Nakamoto_1 NFTs, it’s quite understandable, as there haven’t been many sales - similar to many other NFT projects at the moment. I’m hopeful that maybe funds are located elsewhere for now, and that we hear some more from LunarCrush soon on this… but for a space mission set to launch in about 5 months, we seem to be a long way away from the exciting initially announced 62 Bitcoin treasure.

TL;DR: In April 2023, LunarCrush announced they’d be sending a treasure chest with 62 Bitcoin to the moon this year aboard a Lunar Outpost rover via a SpaceX rocket, accessible to whoever got there first to obtain the private key etched on the lunar rover. Since then, funding from NFT sales seems to be slow, and the current LunarCrush payload wallet balance sits at about $45 worth of STX, as well as some NFTs. You might not want to design your own lunar mission to hunt the treasure just yet.