What are you able to vary besides fill-colour, e.g. font, size etc?
A blind-spot which prompts to ask. Vary too much and it becomes a useless fuzzy heiroglyph. Color-blindness must remain a priority. One thing is obvious - font should be white.
To that end I'd make every 3rd character determine the colour for a block of 3. More visually mnemonic. Can it be spread across multiple lines? e.g. 3 lines of 11 characters