Gale crater toward Mount Sharp, photographed by NASA's Curiosity rover

SOL 0 · ARRIVAL · 6.47°S 283.15°E

$MARS

The first coin minted from Mars.

Descend ↓

01 — LIGHT FROM ANOTHER WORLD

Sunlight hit the surface of Mars. It bounced up, crossed space, and landed on a camera in orbit.

On August 15, 2026, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter pointed its HiRISE camera at the layered terrain near 6.5°S and captured it in color. That image is public. Anyone on Earth can download it, byte for byte.

$MARS is the first coin whose mint key is seeded from that light. Not a mascot. Not a metaphor. A real photograph of another planet, hashed and folded into the keypair that creates the token.

HiRISE detail crop of Martian layered terrain
DETAIL A · ESP_094000_1735
HiRISE detail crop
DETAIL B
HiRISE detail crop
DETAIL C
HiRISE RGB strip ESP_094000_1735 (unprojected), layered terrain on Mars
MRO / HiRISE
ESP_094000_1735_COLOR
UTC 2026-08-15 21:09:17
Ls 336.41°
LAT −6.36° → −6.58°
LON 283.13°E – 283.17°E
ORBITAL PASS 0%

02 — THE DERIVATION

From photons to a keypair.

  1. I

    The image

    ESP_094000_1735_COLOR.JP2, 113 MB, straight from the NASA PDS archive.

  2. II

    SHA-256

    …

  3. III

    + Private entropy

    32 random bytes generated locally, never transmitted. Only their hash is published up front. Mixed with the Mars hash through HKDF-SHA256, labeled with the image ID and capture time.

  4. IV

    ed25519 keypair

    The 32-byte seed becomes a Solana keypair, exactly as solana-keygen does it.

    MINT ADDRESS
    pubkey FtHz3vdrcUqfs7YC3oscsPE34Hf2hTGcYqPtEyq2qycy
    entropy commitment sha256 2267aad3ecc5dfa36f5c8d135b0e908f0418645d7b81c40cdfe92896ce82aaed
    info ESP_094000_1735_COLOR2026-08-15T21:09:17.752 · salt MARS-MINT-v1

03 — VERIFY IT YOURSELF

No trust needed. Download Mars.

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 ↗
$ sha256sum ESP_094000_1735_COLOR.JP2
436965b5e00b41f89fde63437d6bb13a
1a983f23c76ab21da8f7a3a6bf0d69b3

Commit, then reveal

Before launch: we publish the hash of our private entropy. That locks it in; it can't be swapped later.

Mint: the Mars hash + entropy derive the mint key. Mint authority is renounced.

After: we reveal the entropy. Anyone can rerun HKDF and land on the exact contract address.

Why it's safe: without the 256 secret bits, the public Mars hash reveals nothing about the key. Guessing would take 2256 tries.

04 — THE TOKEN

$MARS

CONTRACTFtHz3vdrcUqfs7YC3oscsPE34Hf2hTGcYqPtEyq2qycy