Happy Thanksgiving from the Portal. The Gathering, a harvest cipher maze, is free to play until 30 November. Enter The Gathering

3 stages · Medium · free · no account needed

THE FIRST BLOCK

📜 Briefing
Every chain starts somewhere. Before the ledgers and the forgeries, there was one block, and someone has to seal it.

Three steps. Each one uses the answer from the step before.
  1. 1 Block One - The Fingerprint
  2. 2 Block Two - The Root 🔒 opens with stage 1's answer
  3. 3 Block Three - The Seal 🔒 opens with stage 2's answer

Playing as a guest. No account needed, but nothing is scored or saved past this visit. Create a free account to earn points on every chain, keep your progress and climb the leaderboard.

Stage 1: Block One - The Fingerprint

Every block is known by its fingerprint: a SHA-256 hash. Whatever goes in, 64 characters come out, and changing a single letter of the input changes all of them. That is what makes a chain hard to tamper with. Take the fingerprint of the first block's message.
WHAT TO DO
1. Scroll down to the workbench. The message is in the Input box. Press "+ Add step 1" and choose SHA-256 Hash.
2. Do not change the message. The Output box shows its hash: 64 characters.
3. Your answer is the first 8 characters of the Output.

Input: every block remembers the one before it

    Unscored guest play: take your time, hints are free. A member solving this stage scores up to 240 points.

    Full tool pages: Hash Chain Visualizer ↗

    🛠 Workbench

    The stage's ciphertext is loaded. Press “+ Add step 1” and choose the tool this stage needs, then press “Use as answer” below the result. The server alone checks answers.