$MOON

01 — THE FIRST FOOTPRINTS

On July 20, 1969, two people landed on the Sea of Tranquility. Forty-two years later, a camera in orbit looked back.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has circled the Moon since 2009. Its narrow-angle cameras build images one line at a time as the spacecraft sweeps over the surface, fine enough to resolve the hardware Apollo left behind.

On November 5, 2011, at 09:34:24 UTC, on orbit 10942, the right narrow-angle camera began a pass over the Apollo 11 landing site. 17.7 seconds and 52,224 lines later it had recorded frame M175124932R.

That raw frame sits in the LROC archive, byte for byte. $MOON is the first coin whose mint key is seeded from it. Not a mascot. A real photograph, hashed and folded into the keypair that creates the token.

Full-resolution crop from the middle of LROC NAC frame M175124932RE — THE HASHED FRAME · M175124932RE · MID-SCAN, LINES 25,662–26,561

Full-resolution crop from LROC NAC frame M175124932RE — LINES 13,000–13,899

03 — THE DERIVATION

From a photograph of the landing site to a keypair.

I
The image
M175124932RE.IMG, 264,467,400 bytes, from the LROC PDS archive. Started 2011-11-05T09:34:24.703 UTC.
II
SHA-256
…
III
+ Private entropy
32 random bytes made offline on the minting machine. Only their hash is published before launch. Mixed with the Moon hash through HKDF-SHA256, labeled with the product ID and start time.
IV
ed25519 keypair
The 32-byte seed becomes a Solana keypair, exactly as solana-keygen does it. Its public key is the contract address.

PRODUCTM175124932RE · LROC NAC EDR · LRO-L-LROC-2-EDR-V1.0 · volume LROLRC_0009 · v1.8

URLpds.lroc.im-ldi.com/data/LRO-L-LROC-2-EDR-V1.0/LROLRC_0009/DATA/SCI/2011309/NAC/M175124932RE.IMG

SIZE264,467,400 bytes

SHA-256e8bfd20afe385af1f600c1fb3fb4bc7ef842aab26f4d9d46bc2520f0b5885a15

MD5 (FILE)b5d1dc3bad3b2fdc70787a83236335df

MD5 (LABEL, IMAGE)d631e35245d9472d4c3ecc1f6d18dac0 · label MD5_CHECKSUM of the image object (bytes 5,064 → end) · matches

SALTMOON-MINT-v1

INFOM175124932RE2011-11-05T09:34:24.703

LABEL START / STOP2011-11-05T09:34:24.703 → 09:34:42.413 UTC · orbit 10942 · FRAME_ID RIGHT

LABEL FORMATPDS3 · RECORD_BYTES 5064 · FILE_RECORDS 52225 · 52,224 lines × 5,064 samples · 8-bit

PRODUCT_CREATION_TIME2013-11-03T09:36:31 · ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY · ORIGINAL_PRODUCT_ID nacr0007c3c2

KDFHKDF-SHA256(ikm = entropy ‖ sha256(file), salt, info, L = 32) → Ed25519 seed → base58 pubkey

COMMITMENTAWAITING · published before launch

MINT ADDRESSAWAITING CA

04 — VERIFY IT YOURSELF

No trust needed. Download the frame.

Fetch the official file from the LROC archive and hash it. You'll get the same 64 characters we did.

Official PDS file ↗

$ curl -LO https://pds.lroc.im-ldi.com/data/LRO-L-LROC-2-EDR-V1.0/LROLRC_0009/DATA/SCI/2011309/NAC/M175124932RE.IMG
$ sha256sum M175124932RE.IMG
e8bfd20afe385af1f600c1fb3fb4bc7e
f842aab26f4d9d46bc2520f0b5885a15

Commit, then reveal

1 · Commit. Before launch we publish sha256 of our private entropy. That locks it in; it can't be swapped later. AWAITING

2 · Mint. The Moon hash + entropy derive the mint key. The token goes live on Solana. AWAITING CA

3 · Reveal. After launch the entropy is published. Anyone reruns HKDF and lands on the exact contract address. SEALED UNTIL LAUNCH

Receipt: commit post · soon

RECOMPUTE, STEP BY STEP

Download M175124932RE.IMG from the LROC PDS archive (link above). It is 264,467,400 bytes.
sha256 it. You get e8bfd20a…885a15, the Moon hash.
sha256 the revealed entropy bytes. It must equal the commitment published before launch.
Run HKDF-SHA256(ikm = entropy ‖ moon_hash, salt = "MOON-MINT-v1", info = "M175124932RE2011-11-05T09:34:24.703", L = 32).
Use the 32-byte output as an Ed25519 seed. Its public key, in base58, is the $MOON contract address.

# pip install pynacl base58
import hashlib, hmac, nacl.signing, base58
ent = bytes.fromhex("<ENTROPY · REVEALED AFTER LAUNCH>")
mh  = hashlib.sha256(open("M175124932RE.IMG","rb").read()).digest()
assert mh.hex() == "e8bfd20afe385af1f600c1fb3fb4bc7ef842aab26f4d9d46bc2520f0b5885a15"
assert hashlib.sha256(ent).hexdigest() == "<COMMITMENT>"
prk  = hmac.new(b"MOON-MINT-v1", ent + mh, hashlib.sha256).digest()
seed = hmac.new(prk, b"M175124932RE2011-11-05T09:34:24.703" + b"\x01", hashlib.sha256).digest()
print(base58.b58encode(bytes(nacl.signing.SigningKey(seed).verify_key)).decode())
# -> AWAITING CA

OR WITH OUR SCRIPTS

$ curl -LO https://realmooncoin.fun/files/derive.js
$ node derive.js hash                      # e8bfd20afe385af1f600c1fb3fb4bc7ef842aab26f4d9d46bc2520f0b5885a15
$ node derive.js --test                    # throwaway vector below
$ node derive.js verify --entropy <hex>    # after the reveal -> commitment + contract address
$ python3 derive.py --test                 # independent cross-check (pip install pynacl base58)

TEST ENTROPY000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f101112131415161718191a1b1c1d1e1f · throwaway, never used for the mint

TEST COMMITMENT630dcd2966c4336691125448bbb25b4ff412a49c732db2c8abc1b8581bd710dd

TEST SEED3920d6fe211194bc8490629d374132c8a015f898e62754807e3822755699eead

TEST PUBKEY9HRcaR91mxsr4EbQ6q5iYYxf1U6wmniwBjKAEoEAM3r · Node and Python agree

LIVE COMMITMENTAWAITING

LIVE CONTRACTAWAITING CA

DOWNLOADS

proof.json derive.js derive.py README.md test-vector.json M175124932RE.IMG · 264 MB · official archive ↗

06 — FAQ

Questions from Earth.

Is the image real?

Yes. It is Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera narrow-angle frame M175124932R, the image LROC lists for the Apollo 11 landing site. The hashed file is the raw EDR product, M175124932RE.IMG, in data set LRO-L-LROC-2-EDR-V1.0, volume LROLRC_0009. The MD5 recorded in its own PDS label matches the image bytes.

Why can't you pick a nicer address?

The image was fixed in 2011. Our entropy is locked by a hash we publish before launch. Once both are committed there is exactly one possible address, and anyone can recompute it after the reveal.

Can someone steal the key from the image?

No. The image is public; the 32 bytes of entropy are not. Without them, finding the seed means searching 2²⁵⁶ possibilities. The entropy is only revealed after the mint exists and its authorities are revoked, so the key controls nothing by then.

What happens if the archive re-processes the file?

Archived PDS products are stable, but a future re-release would have different bytes. The SHA-256, size and MD5 above are the reference; the label's own MD5_CHECKSUM lets you check the image bytes independently of us.

Where is the Moon picture at the top from?

It is rendered from NASA's CGI Moon Kit: LRO's wide-angle global colour mosaic and LOLA elevation data, re-lit and graded in silver. Real surface, our lighting.

Is this affiliated with NASA or anyone?

No. It uses public-domain data. $MOON is a memecoin with no intrinsic value or expectation of return.

On July 20, 1969, two people landed on the Sea of Tranquility. Forty-two years later, a camera in orbit looked back.

From a photograph of the landing site to a keypair.

The image

SHA-256

+ Private entropy

ed25519 keypair

No trust needed. Download the frame.

Commit, then reveal

Questions from Earth.