Crypto MacGuffins 1: Death Valley Dead Drop

Symbol Project
3 min readDec 4, 2021

TL;DR: Cryptographic smart contracts can be used to create incredible real-world adventures. Some crypto was dropped in Death Valley to illustrate this idea.

Zabriskie Point

The Drop

A piece of paper is hidden in a container at a randomly selected location within Death Valley National Park. The drop is:

  • On the ground (not buried)
  • Not associated with a spring or man-made structure (such as mine structures, features, or ruins)
  • Not in any area closed to the public

Finally, the drop can be found without breaking the rules and regulations of Death Valley National Park.

Zones and Red Zones

The drop has been hidden in a zone randomly selected from a grid of approximately 10-mile by 10-mile labelled zones on the Map. To make finding the drop easier, one labelled zone will be randomly eliminated every few days (becoming a “Red Zone” on the Map). If the wallet has not been claimed after the final Red Zone has been revealed, the location of the drop will be revealed shortly after.

The MacGuffin

The MacGuffin is a piece of paper with a private key to an address on the Ethereum network. The MacGuffin is hidden inside of a waterproof container. The container is roughly one foot tall and would be immediately obvious to someone searching for it. More details on the container will be revealed later.

The Address

1 Ether has been deposited to the address at 0xD176B2038c49889713Aef851dD9660091dde5CeB . Additional tokens will be given if a finder contacts the project’s Twitter account for a postgame interview.

An Open Treasure Chest

One unique feature that these MacGuffins have is that anyone can send crypto to the address. If you feel so inclined, you can send your Ether, ERC-20s, shitcoins, NFTs, and other assets to 0xD176B2038c49889713Aef851dD9660091dde5CeB and they will be automatically added to the MacGuffin.

If you are interested in sending assets on a different L1/L2 (i.e. BTC or Solana), message our Twitter Account.

Trust

How do I know that if I send crypto to the MacGuffin, you won’t immediately steal it?

You don’t.

The goal for the Dead Valley Dead Drop is to prove that smart contracts can be used for real-world treasure hunts and to establish trust for a more elaborate Crypto MacGufffins 2.

How do I know that there’s really a MacGuffin hidden in Death Valley?

You don’t. Again, the purpose of this project is to test the viability of this sort of thing.

Errata

How was the zone selected?

Using the following code:

Red Zones will be revealed by randomly selecting from wholes + halves (in an unweighted manner).

Symbol Project and this Death Valley Dead Drop are not affiliated or associated with Death Valley National Park.

Discord

Join us on the Symbol Project Discord for further discussion!

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