Bitcoin Forum

Hi,

I'm trying to use firstbits to generate a shortened address and it just complains that the address is not in the chain even though I have made transactions with it. Blockchain.info has already generated a firstbits address so it should be working. However, when I pasted the blockchain.info address into firstbits, I got a completely different address to the one that was supposed to be shortened. I have no idea what's going on but this can't be good for firstbits, right?

For example, this address:
12roGRp1DuvzZF97JkryNpbpdRDwm4DmWh https://blockchain.info/address/12roGRp1DuvzZF97JkryNpbpdRDwm4DmWh has firstbits 12rog but if you type that into firstbits, I get a completely different address out: 12RogVscnRvknEEptc3UwH6mxmuBzYH6fz https://blockchain.info/address/12RogVscnRvknEEptc3UwH6mxmuBzYH6fz
and if I shorten that one, I get 12rog out which is weird.

Are blockchain.info and firstbits operating on different chains? Am I completely misunderstanding how firstbits works or is something actually going wrong here?

Cheers,
Durand

Sounds like the firstbits database on Blockchain.info needs to be recalculated. I suspect it has to do with the database issues they've been having.

I thought it might be that but that doesn't explain why I can't create a firstbit of 12roGRp1DuvzZF97JkryNpbpdRDwm4DmWh on firstbits.com I think the problem might be at both ends.

I had a similar problem when I tried it a week or so ago. It refused to recognize a recent address, but one of my older Bitcoin addresses worked fine. I guess it stopped updating itself at some point?

Yeah, that seems likely. It's really annoying though because it makes firstbits completely useless as its hard to predict what value someone will get out when they use your firstbit.