$MERCURY

01 — THE LAST LIGHT

On April 30, 2015, a spacecraft took one last picture of Mercury. Eight hours later it became a crater.

MESSENGER was the first spacecraft ever to orbit the innermost planet. For four years it circled a world scorched by a Sun that looks up to three times wider than it does from Earth, and it sent home more than 270,000 images.

Then it ran out of fuel. At 11:07:43 UTC, 28.9 km above the floor of Jokai crater, its narrow-angle camera took a final frame. At 19:26 UTC it struck the surface at 3.9 km/s.

That last frame is archived by NASA's Planetary Data System, byte for byte. $MERCURY 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.

Crop of CN1072716050M, MESSENGER's final image of Mercury — THE HASHED FRAME · CN1072716050M · 1.52 m/px

Crop of MESSENGER frame CN1072716046M — T−4 s · CN1072716046M

Crop of MESSENGER frame CN1072716038M — T−12 s · CN1072716038M

03 — THE DERIVATION

From the last photons to a keypair.

I
The image
CN1072716050M_IF_5.IMG, 1,058,816 bytes, from NASA's PDS archive. Captured 2015-04-30T11:07:43.368128 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 Mercury hash through HKDF-SHA256, labeled with the product ID and capture 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.

PRODUCTCN1072716050M_IF_5 · MDIS NAC CDR · MESS-E/V/H-MDIS-4-CDR-CALDATA-V1.0

URLplanetarydata.jpl.nasa.gov/img/data/messenger/MSGRMDS_2001/CDR/2015_120/CN1072716050M_IF_5.IMG

SIZE1,058,816 bytes

SHA-256cec65107973de146a0dda7ee9fd30ccfec65554fcafc4f1230ccdb09c4ab7142

MD5 (PDS MD5.TAB)7aac7b8b3aa04e3dd43a3572c9b67da6

SALTMERCURY-MINT-v1

INFOCN1072716050M_IF_52015-04-30T11:07:43.368128

COMMITMENTAWAITING · published before launch

MINT ADDRESSAWAITING CA

04 — VERIFY IT YOURSELF

No trust needed. Download the last image.

Fetch the official file from NASA's Planetary Data System and hash it. You'll get the same 64 characters we did.

Official PDS file ↗

$ curl -LO https://planetarydata.jpl.nasa.gov/img/data/messenger/MSGRMDS_2001/CDR/2015_120/CN1072716050M_IF_5.IMG
$ sha256sum CN1072716050M_IF_5.IMG
cec65107973de146a0dda7ee9fd30ccf
ec65554fcafc4f1230ccdb09c4ab7142

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 Mercury 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 CN1072716050M_IF_5.IMG from the PDS Imaging Node (link above). It is 1,058,816 bytes.
sha256 it. You get cec65107…ab7142, the Mercury hash.
sha256 the revealed entropy bytes. It must equal the commitment published before launch.
Run HKDF-SHA256(ikm = entropy ‖ mercury_hash, salt = "MERCURY-MINT-v1", info = "CN1072716050M_IF_52015-04-30T11:07:43.368128", L = 32).
Use the 32-byte output as an Ed25519 seed. Its public key, in base58, is the $MERCURY contract address.

# pip install pynacl base58
import hashlib, hmac, nacl.signing, base58
ent = bytes.fromhex("<ENTROPY · REVEALED AFTER LAUNCH>")
mh  = hashlib.sha256(open("CN1072716050M_IF_5.IMG","rb").read()).digest()
assert mh.hex() == "cec65107973de146a0dda7ee9fd30ccfec65554fcafc4f1230ccdb09c4ab7142"
assert hashlib.sha256(ent).hexdigest() == "<COMMITMENT>"
prk  = hmac.new(b"MERCURY-MINT-v1", ent + mh, hashlib.sha256).digest()
seed = hmac.new(prk, b"CN1072716050M_IF_52015-04-30T11:07:43.368128" + b"\x01", hashlib.sha256).digest()
print(base58.b58encode(bytes(nacl.signing.SigningKey(seed).verify_key)).decode())
# -> AWAITING CA

Self-test: with entropy 00 01 02 … 1f (a throwaway vector, never used for the mint) the script prints G34KduVxsrCf7DSMNPoTNjCb8CYCD8LL83gwU2oqvP2s. Machine-readable record: /proof.json

06 — FAQ

Questions from Earth.

Is the image real?

Yes. It is MESSENGER's final image, MDIS narrow-angle frame EN1072716050M (MESSENGER image ID 8422953, released by NASA as PIA19448). The hashed file is the calibrated version, CN1072716050M_IF_5.IMG, on the PDS volume MSGRMDS_2001. Its MD5 matches the archive's own MD5.TAB.

Why can't you pick a nicer address?

The image was fixed in 2015. 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 NASA re-processes the file?

Archived PDS products are stable, but a future re-release would have different bytes. We mirror the exact file on this site, and the SHA-256 above is the reference.

Why now?

ESA and JAXA's BepiColombo is scheduled to enter orbit around Mercury on 21 November 2026, the first spacecraft there since MESSENGER. $MERCURY is minted from the last light the first one sent home.

Is this affiliated with NASA or anyone?

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

On April 30, 2015, a spacecraft took one last picture of Mercury. Eight hours later it became a crater.

From the last photons to a keypair.

The image

SHA-256

+ Private entropy

ed25519 keypair

No trust needed. Download the last image.

Commit, then reveal

Questions from Earth.