Bored Ape Creator Giving Away Bitcoin in Ordinals Puzzle Game

The creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club is promising puzzles, prizes, and Bitcoin with its latest initiative. Created around its generative art collection TwelveFold, Yuga Labs has launched a cipher puzzle series inspired by the Bitcoin-based artwork—and will be giving out Bitcoin as prizes to participants.

“The TwelveFold puzzles stay true to the inspiration behind the collection—the relationship between time, mathematics, and variability,” said the company today. 

TwelveFold is a 300-piece generative art collection built on Ordinals, the protocol that lets users “inscribe” NFT-like artwork and other assets to the Bitcoin blockchain. Although the March auction garnered some criticism within the crypto space, Yuga Labs managed to raise about $16.5 million from the primary sale via 288 successful bidders.

Symbolic of how data is stored on the Bitcoin blockchain, Yuga said, TwelveFold art pieces are 12×12 grids that combine 3D graphics and hand-drawn characteristics. These art pieces, which have been inscribed onto individual satoshis (the smallest denomination of a Bitcoin), provide the base for the newly launched puzzle series. 

Starting today, Yuga Labs will be release one “Moon Puzzle” for people to try and solve every week for 12 weeks, and offer up 0.12 Bitcoin (about $3,090 at present) as a prize to the first correct guesser for each weekly puzzle.

On the 13th week, however, the Moon will be replaced by the “Sun Puzzle” which will reward the winner with one of the TwelveFold Ordinals. TwelveFold pieces currently start at a price of about 0.9 BTC (about $23,150) on the Magic Eden secondary marketplace.

Each puzzle can be solved by anybody, not just TwelveFold asset owners. However, Yuga Labs teased in the news post that TwelveFold holders can expect “something coming your way soon.”

To participate, users will need an Ordinals Bitcoin wallet, such as Xverse or Unisat. Players can then head to the TwelveFold website, download a puzzle, and let their creative—or logical—minds get to work. Answers are submitted by inscribing them on-chain via satoshis, so the submission process will live forever on the Bitcoin blockchain. 

There can only be one winner per puzzle, said Yuga, which added that tax forms are required in order to claim the prize money. In case of simultaneous correct answers making it into the same block, the winner will be decided by whoever has the lower inscription number. 

The competition could be fierce, however, as Yuga’s website already shows that today’s puzzle has been solved.