(Read the project overview first in The Proclamation)

Precedent exists for setup ceremonies within the cryptocurrency space. The Zcash Sprout trusted setup ceremony was executed in October 2016 to minimize trust during the generation of random numbers that allowed the Zcash blockchain’s genesis parameters to be set, then launched, free from the ability to counterfeit ZEC in the future. As long as at least one participant of many in that ceremony generated their randomized inputs honestly, the launch would be cryptographically uncompromised, and the setup ceremony successful.

In our ceremony, instead of dealing with randomized inputs to elicit cryptographic soundness, our concerns lie in the physical world: specifically, the conventional authentication of the Black Lotus to be sacrificed, and a gathering of witnesses to the sacrifice.

Conventionally, Magic: The Gathering cards are authenticated by a professional grading service. On the strength of its reputation within its industry, the grading service confirms the authenticity and determines the quality of an item, then encases it in a sealed slab so those qualities are preserved and its given grade constant over time. We graded the sacrificial Black Lotus in Canada.

Sealed-slab authentication of the sacrificial Black Lotus allows for its portability, authentic status intact, to the site of the ceremony.

First, we issued public notice to interested Lotus owners, and the pledging period was opened. To tie the ceremonial sacrifice to the digital distribution of its outcome, we necessarily conduct the ceremony at a time of our choosing during the pledging period.

The ceremony is announced with reasonable but short notice, to take place at approximately 20:30 EST on 2022-02-19, so interested parties may witness it over live video stream at twitch.tv/nsfcrypto. The live stream is recorded from beginning to end, for later permanent publication. The footage, unaltered, has been permanently archived on the uncensorable LBRY blockchain, and can be seen here.

The program of the sacrificial ceremony is:

I: Marking and confirmation of the live stream and the recording

II: Announcement of the purpose and procedure of the ceremony

III: Timestamp confirmation of the date of the ceremony

IV: Multi-camera close-up display of the sacrificial Black Lotus, its uncompromised slab, and its intact label-- we may opt to first test-run live with another slabbed card

V: Installing the sacrificial Black Lotus in its altar

VI: Performing the sacrificial act

VII: Removing the remains of the Black Lotus from the altar

VIII: Multi-camera close-up display of the remains of the Black Lotus and the destruction to it, with its still-intact label

IX: Conclusion of ceremony and termination of live stream and recording

At no time during the ceremony shall the Black Lotus move off-camera or become obscured from vision of the camera focused on it.

As near as possible to the conclusion of the ceremony, all recordings of it will be uploaded to redundant decentralized hosts, as well as more viewer-convenient centralized platforms, as archival footage for anyone wishing to witness the authenticity of the ceremony themselves after the event.