Bitcoin Forum

In the world of cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin stands as a pioneer, revolutionizing the way we perceive and transact with digital assets. Bitcoin addresses, typically composed of random characters, serve as identifiers for sending and receiving funds. However, the advent of vanity Bitcoin address generators has allowed users to create customized addresses that align with their personal or brand identity. This article explores the process, benefits, security considerations, and practical applications of vanity Bitcoin addresses.

1. Vanity Bitcoin Address Generation Process:
To generate a vanity Bitcoin address, a computationally intensive process called brute-forcing is employed. This involves systematically searching for addresses that match a desired pattern. The complexity of the pattern or the desired word determines the time and computational resources required to find a matching address. While the process is resource-intensive, it ensures the uniqueness and functionality of the resulting vanity addresses.

2. Purpose and Benefits of Vanity Bitcoin Addresses:
2.1 Personalization:
Vanity Bitcoin addresses allow individuals to personalize their transactions by incorporating specific patterns or words that hold personal significance. For example, one could create an address that contains their name, birthdate, or a meaningful word, making it easier to remember and associate with their identity.

2.2 Branding and Marketing:
Businesses can leverage vanity addresses as a powerful branding tool. By incorporating their brand name or relevant keywords into the address, companies enhance recognition and reinforce their brand image. Vanity addresses can be utilized in marketing campaigns, website URLs, or social media profiles, thereby increasing user engagement and trust.

2.3 Memorability:
The human mind is more inclined to remember words or patterns that hold personal significance. Vanity addresses capitalize on this aspect by providing users with addresses that are easier to recall and share accurately, reducing the risk of errors in transactions.

3. Security and Privacy Considerations:

3.1 Address Generation Trustworthiness:
It is crucial to exercise caution when selecting a vanity address generator. Users should rely on reputable and trusted software to generate their vanity addresses. This mitigates the risk of falling victim to scams or compromising the security of their Bitcoin funds.

3.2 Private Key Management:
Regardless of the type of Bitcoin address used, proper private key management is essential. Vanity addresses do not offer additional security or privacy benefits over regular addresses. Users must follow best practices for securing their private keys and employ reputable wallet software to safeguard their funds.

3.3 Public Perception:
While vanity addresses themselves do not pose inherent security risks, public perception may vary. Some may perceive vanity addresses as potentially more vulnerable to attacks or targeting by malicious actors. It is essential to educate users about the underlying security principles and dispel any misconceptions associated with vanity addresses.

4. Practical Use Cases:

4.1 Personal Use:
Individuals can benefit from vanity addresses by creating addresses that resonate with their personal identity. This could include addresses containing their name, nickname, or any word of significance to them. Vanity addresses enhance personalization and can be used for personal transactions or sharing funds with friends and family.

4.2 Business Applications:
Businesses can leverage vanity addresses in various ways. They can create addresses specifically for receiving donations, which can be prominently displayed on websites or in fundraising campaigns. Vanity addresses can also be used to promote specific products or services, enhancing brand recognition and establishing trust among customers.

Vanity Addresses vs. Regular Bitcoin Addresses:
Vanity addresses and regular addresses share the same functionality within the Bitcoin network. The primary difference lies in the generation process and the personalized nature of vanity addresses. Generating a vanity address is more computationally intensive due to the need to search for specific patterns or words. However, both types of addresses require secure private key management to ensure the safety of funds.


Vanity Bitcoin address generators offer individuals and businesses the opportunity to personalize their Bitcoin addresses, aligning them with personal or brand identity. They provide a means to enhance recognition, brand image, and memorability. However, it is crucial to exercise caution, follow best security practices, and rely on reputable address generators to ensure the safety and integrity of Bitcoin funds. Vanity addresses are a creative and engaging way to interact with the world of cryptocurrencies while maintaining the security principles underlying Bitcoin transactions.

TBH I didn't know that customized BTC address are known as vanity addresses because few months back there was attack going on by scammer knows as address poisoning in which scammers make a address which have the first and last words in match with your address and those scammers will send you zero value transactions mostly from trc 20 blockchain.

And when a person selects the address from explorer history to send or receive assets he fooled into selecting the scammers wallet as we only read the first and last two numbers.

I hope this would be share among many members because once they knew about vanity address they will be safe from this scam and as you mentioned the pros and cons they should also read it and after reading this article I also checked some vanity address generators but they took so much time and your guide lack some pictorial representation so if you could add them it would be great for newbies like me but I think you are also newbie so maybe that's why you didn't added them.

Thank you for sharing your experience and concerns related to vanity Bitcoin addresses and the potential risks associated with address poisoning scams. It is indeed important to be aware of such malicious activities and take precautions to safeguard against them.

Address poisoning scams, where scammers create addresses that resemble legitimate ones by having the same first and last few characters, can be deceiving. Users may inadvertently select the scammer's wallet when relying solely on the first and last characters of an address without carefully verifying the entire address.

I appreciate your suggestion regarding the inclusion of pictorial representations and understand that visual aids can be helpful, particularly for newcomers. I will certainly take your feedback into consideration for future improvements in providing visual support wherever possible. It is important to continue sharing information about the risks and benefits of vanity addresses to educate and protect users within the Bitcoin community.

If you want to generate a vanity address, the best tool for doing so is this one:
https://github.com/JeanLucPons/VanitySearch
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5112311.0

By far the safest way to generate a vanity address is on your own airgapped computer, so you can be sure no one else has access to your private key. If you are desperate for a vanity address but cannot generate one yourself, there is a method called split key generation where someone else can generate one for you trustlessly. It involves you generating a private key and then giving the associated public key to the person who will generate the vanity address for you. Based on this public key they can generate another private key which will lead to the desired address when combined with your own private key. Only you will know both private keys so only you can access the address.

In practice, with limited computational resource you only can generate few first character of Bitcoin address (e.g. 1YourBrand...). The rest of characters still looks random and near impossible to remember without any mistake.

I don't want to personalize an address with Vanity and store all my bitcoin in that address. If I create one Vanity address, I will use it for very small storage. I don't go with very customized process and lose myself in it. Be simple with non customize process to create my address makes me safer.

If you are very technical and security wise with what you do, you can play with Vanity address.

1miau and feryjhie have two guides about creating Vanity address.
[Guide] How to create your customized Bitcoin-Address (vanitygen) – step by step (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5096373.0)
[GUIDE] How To Create Vanity Address (Segwit) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5144752.0)

It is impossible to create a Vanity address with too many customized characters like more than 8. It is discussed in Vanity address (Mastering Bitcoin book) (https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook/blob/develop/ch04.asciidoc#vanity-addresses)

You did quite a good copy and pasting here! Anyway you should be mindful of scam sites and although you said alot about 'vanity bitcoin addresses' which to me is all VANITY in the world of the worldwide  known Bitcoin.
You could probably give examples of how the address looks like and other existing genuine sites that uses this form of addresses!

This is only for legacy addresses, and does not hold true for segwit addresses. I can generate an 8 character custom segwit address in around 3 minutes.

I created my vanity address I think in 2017 or so and I did it from the terminal with an old pc the process to create it wasn't particularly difficult but I remember it took almost 6/7 hours to do it.  I should also have written a thread in the Italian board if I remember correctly.  But in all honesty I've never really used my vanity address, let's just say I did it to say…hey look I'm cool.

1MENDaCeetHUXMjYcnoY38NkCKUWrqxx2j

I think back in the day you could order your own custom vanity address by providing some key and the service that found your vanity for you would provide you with the other half of that key. You would combine the two and get the private key but the vanity service wouldn’t have access to your vanity address. No idea if the service still exists.

I am assuming it never caught on because people didn’t exactly trust how much entropy you got it the vanity service knew like half the private keys. And wasn’t highly used since most just used their gpus in those days to mine ETH.

It's called split key generation, as I outlined in my earlier post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5458347.msg62496103#msg62496103. If anyone is desperate for a vanity address and can't do it yourself, I'm happy to generate one using the split key method for you.

It is completely secure. The (very simplified) basis is that you end up adding the two private keys together (the one you generate and keep secret, and the one I would generate for you), and the final private key leads to your vanity address. I would only ever know the private key I generate. Therefore, all I know is that your unknown private key (x) plus the key I have gives another unknown private key (y). As an equation:

x + privkey = y

As you can see, me knowing the value of "privkey" is useless, as there are infinite solutions to that equation. Only you know your private key x, and so only you can calculate the final private key y.

That's true when we're talking about legacy address, i used 9 customized characters only as example. Although 9 customized character on legacy address is still possible with few high end GPU in few months.

I never knew what a vanity address was actually until Yogg  made me a special one (long before he stole all those funds from ppl on his bitcoin collectibles). It was a 1/1 peice with a name affixed to it. Very special and cool, too bad it's worthless now haha. I think vanity addresses are very unique for sure.

I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable on this, but impossible is probably a wrong word to describe it. There are vanity addresses with more than 8 customized characters. The book is apparently referring to what a normal desktop PC can do. For a GPU with a lot more computational power, however, I think beyond 8 characters is very possible.

Please take note that my weekly payment comes from a vanity address with not just 8 or 9 customized characters but 10, in all caps. And it's a legacy address at that. BestChange pays from 1BESTCHANGEuX2oUwodgvJqB52kTsrfXS9.

Maybe the popularity of open-source vanity address generators also contributes to that. I don't see why you would rely on somebody else if you can use open-source software verified by the community. I do recall one or two services on the forum, but it was years ago. Even if you don't use the custom address as a cold wallet, most of them probably feel uncomfortable using it.

I think it's not advisable to have a special BTC addresses that one like. Vanity address, in my view,  presents a temptation to use it over and over. Doing that could potentially risk user's privacy  and likely impose the security threat to funds vanity address holds, maybe not  instant threat, but who knows what happens next with further development of quantum computations.

I recently checked my decade old blockchain.info wallet, there my btc addy starts with '1Libert..", I dunno if I generated it using vanity address generator or was just a coincidence.

this will depend on the time your address was generated.... If it was before the vanity address generator existed then it may be a just be the standard btc addy (mind you vanity address generator started existing around 2011). on the other hand the standard btc address is just 34 characters long (no spaces). Also, It's worth noting that Bitcoin addresses are randomly generated, so it is possible to generate an address that appears to have a specific pattern purely by chance.

Personalized bitcoin addresses for branding? It reminds me of something. Hmm, won't something similar happen, as it did with domain names in the early days of the Internet? When all cool titles will have owners and will be sold for a lot of money. Of course, this is complicated by the presence of private keys and the wide variety of public addresses due to the large number of characters, which allows you to have many addresses with the same brand name.

In my opinion, it is not necessary to have a unique business BTC-address (in fact, this is impossible due to the many addresses with a similar brand name among the symbols of public addresses), but there are additional hassles. The need to have computing power to generate a unique address and ensure the safety of the private key in the process.

I also have a question. Isn't it easier to hack into such addresses containing unique brand names in a public address?

The use of recognizable words or patterns in a public Bitcoin address does not necessarily make the address easier to hack. The security of the address depends on cryptographic algorithms and like you said, the private key associated with the address itself..... The other question should be how easy is it to get access to the private key of a Bitcoin address and trust me, that is nearly impossible unless the said individual makes the mistake of publishing their private keys to the public

Not if it was generated properly, as ETFbitcoin has pointed out above.

A private key is just a random number between 1 and (almost) 2²⁵⁶. I pick a random number in that range, and it gives me a random looking address. You have a 1 in 2²⁵⁶ chance (i.e. completely impossible) to guess my private key.

Now, let's say I want a vanity address. I take the same private key I just generated above, and I add one to it. I check the address it generates. It doesn't give me my desired vanity address. So I add one again, and check the new address. Still not a match. So I do it again. And again. And again. Adding one each time and checking the new address. Vanity generator software will do this millions of times a second. Eventually we find an address which matches.*

What does an attacker know when they see a vanity address? They know that I started a random private key, and I added an unknown number of 1s until I reached a new private key. So an unknown plus another unknown to reach a third unknown. This obviously tells them nothing useful about my private key, and so provides no additional attack surface over any other private key.

*This is a simplified explanation which does not touch on symmetry and endomorphism, but the premise is the same.

Thanks for input, I created my blockchain.info wallet in 2014 (welcome email dates 24/5/2014).

Vanity Bitcoin Address can using VGA for processing?? or only using CPU??

And here is the problem, it makes it easier to scam people.
For example, your name here is Sinzu:
PubAddress: 1SinzuYFiFL2Gf1UR4jdnwPJg6pKAN8Ty
Priv (WIF): p2pkh:L3nRvtdjyKkFeitSQQ2Bb3AT5mYYF8cYP5AVYb6BR6xa4pFNA5dV
Priv (HEX): 0xC3DB4DE3280A86C267885786BDACDAEC34F40444B280A6AD5CBF805B7F6F75BE

And just created another address with your prefix in seconds:
PubAddress: 1SinzumcbY1sFNuuEpsg8kTf3Copb1uzi
Priv (WIF): p2pkh:KyRTMC8SQHT4DjLkRZDTsWj11wVmbnPYFQErc57YYTkwi9HxTK9A
Priv (HEX): 0x41B76A047F6AB03D2E82AD69667CF778B68B5117AF5BBEA3C9319EA7E150F77A

1SinzuYFiFL2Gf1UR4jdnwPJg6pKAN8Ty
1SinzumcbY1sFNuuEpsg8kTf3Copb1uzi

Let's assume that first address belongs to you and the 2nd address belongs to scammer. Psychologically, address that starts with 1Sinzu, for me, will be associated with you and if it happens that your account got hacked or someone tries to scam people with your name, scammer will look more legitimate if she creates another vanity bitcoin address that traditionally starts with 1Sinzu.

So, I prefer random address over customized one for safety.

You just blew my mind..... I never looked at it from this angle but then again wow

In addition to this people actually get scammed all the time even with the conventional bitcoin addresses. 1 thing i know is no 2 people can have the same address.... Yes mine may start with 1Sinzu but the followup characters will definitely be different.

Correct. But with increasingly powerful hardware becoming increasingly cheaper, it is becoming increasing easier for attackers to mimic existing addresses.

You'll often see people saying something along the lines of check 3 characters at the start of the address and 3 characters at the end. This is completely insufficient. An attacker can very easily brute force an address which matches this criteria, or even 4 or 5 characters. The only way to be safe is to double check the entire address. It takes <10 seconds to do this, so there really is no excuse for ever falling to such a scam.

will you recommend that people stop using vanity Bitcoin kind of addresses?

They are fine to use as long as you appreciate their risks and drawbacks. The two main ones are malicious similar addresses as described above (although an attacker can do that for any address, not just vanity addresses) and the fact they encourage address reuse.

To add to this, and being a privacy freak, I can't conceive the idea of having a unique address that could be easily tied to one person/user. I'm fully aware that all addresses that are posted in here are searchable in some forums tools (such as Ninjastic[1]) but having a unique addresses makes things worse.
Also, by using samr7 excellent vanity address generator[2][3], you'll end up with Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash (P2PKH) addresses (starting with "1...") which will incur in higher fees whenever someone (or yourself) interacts with that address regarding miner fees. If one still wants to generate addresses that support P2PKH, P2SH and BECH32 I guess that they could always use Jean_Luc (also excellent) vanity address generator[4][5].

---

[1]https://ninjastic.space/addresses (https://ninjastic.space/addresses)
[2]https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25804.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25804.0)
[3]https://github.com/samr7/vanitygen (https://github.com/samr7/vanitygen)
[4]https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5112311.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5112311.0)
[5]https://github.com/JeanLucPons/VanitySearch (https://github.com/JeanLucPons/VanitySearch)

I could always start using bc1qdeckardxs8jqev30gt6m796spdshr23tt552k2 just to confuse things. ;)

That would be quite a slyest disguise indeed, entropy is always a nice addition to one's privacy. I guess I would have to employ the Voight-Kampff test[1] to prevent replicants ;D.
While I do reckon the "vanity" of having one custom address, you are right - there's nothing preventing anyone in creating an address that looks like tied to a particular user. This could lead people in falling into scams more easily...

---

[1]https://bladerunner.fandom.com/wiki/Voight-Kampff_test (https://bladerunner.fandom.com/wiki/Voight-Kampff_test)

There are advantages of using this kind address as well as disadvantages. Say, like me i will only use it for accepting donations on my site, or here i used it on staking address it one of Meta's thread so it's easy to remember and its unique.

But privacy-wise, nah, its just like how bitcoin users use legacy address few years ago when HD wallets are not a thing.