Had the client running a day or two, here's what it found. Both IPs accept inbound connections. Hope this helps.

# coin: batcoin
addnode=185.87.149.61
addnode=91.206.16.214

Link 404?

Other repositories under that account seem to be cracking based, with executables only... so yeah, nah.

More likely to be a programming error. I recall suggesting a few years ago in this thread that something like (pseudoish code) assert(key != 0xe3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855) would have avoided this particular issue.

I'm mining, not investing, thus I want to find some new (preferably obscure) coins to play with. That's why I specified that I didn't want any ERC20 tokens. I currently have 166 coin clients installed, but most of their blockchains are dead, and very few are still listed on an exchange.

I'd prefer to find an exchange I like and work backwards to see what coins they have available, rather than find a coin via a third party then figure out the exchange(s) to use for it.

I know it seems like a weird approach, but remember my perspective is like that of a multipool operator, rather than a retail investor.

A link posted by a newbie to a github rep that only has executables, and no source? That's a pass from me...

What a strange coincidence, I just bumped/updated a 3 year old post of mine with information about mini private keys, and then I find your thread started 7 hours earlier.

See: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4768828.msg60704068#msg60704068

The search space even for the less secure mini private key is still massive (58^22, I guess?). Any attempts at cracking would be an academic curiosity rather than a way to make (ie: steal) funds.

As for cracking a 256 bit private key directly, fuggedaboudit. The exception being weak keys (like the top 240 bits being all zero) that are used for fun and occasionally by mistake.

I came across my simple mini key generator tonight, and I'm having another play with it.

The naive version uses random() and outputs about 8000 valid keys per second on a single core of an i7-3960X.

I updated it to use the xoshiro256** PRNG, and the speed increases to around 13000 valid keys per second.

Because the generation process requires that the first byte of the candidate hash be '00', on average only 1/256 candidates will be valid, so it's really testing about 3.3 million keys per second.

It's still a massive search space (58^30?), even for a SHA256 brainwallet, and prematurely discarding 255 out of 256 candidates does not reduce the search space... it just makes searching faster. Plus, how many Casascius coins were ever created, and how many would still be funded? So this is really just a curiosity.

Here's a small sample of randomly generated valid keys:


The private key is simply the SHA256 hash of the string, like a brainwallet.

Some useless information, but hopefully it might kickstart the thread again.

I am on the hunt for new exchanges that service altcoins with a dedicated blockchain and a dedicated client (ie: not ERC20 tokens)

One of the nice things about Novaexchange (now closed) is that for each coin it included such information:

1. The coin name and ticker
2. The coin icon/logo
3. A link to the coin's official website
4. The blockchain height
5. A page with a list of current peers
6. A link to the github source

Many exchanges only show #1 and #2, at most.

With some coins having ambiguous names and/or ticker symbols, you could be confident with this extra information that you and the exchange were both using the exact same coin, and your client was properly synced relative to the exchange's client.

Curious if any currently open altcoin exchanges provide this level of detail?

It's about 6 hours later, nothing listening on that IP/port?

Try addnode=149.28.164.168

Uh, okay. Guess your feelings have changed over the past 3 years.

I just started up my teacoin client for the first time in nearly 3 years - nearly as long as the time since the last post in this thread - and was surprised to find that it had quietly connected to a few peers, and started syncing. Is there a newer and/or different revival thread active?

Bump

Wondering if anyone is around after all this time. You can try:

addnode=149.28.164.168

...but my blockchain ends in November 2017. Does anyone have a chain with newer blocks? I'll leave the client running for a day or two just in case.

Nearly 4 years later... seems to be only one node (besides my own) that I can find, but they're mining as I type this. The blockchain is still moving.

Some more addnodes. Note that a couple seem to be forked, at a significantly different height.

Been more than 11 years since the large majority of the balance (79956 BTC) was deposited to 1FeexV6bAHb8ybZjqQMjJrcCrHGW9sb6uF. Those funds, and the multiple dust/tracer amounts added since, have never moved.

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1FeexV6bAHb8ybZjqQMjJrcCrHGW9sb6uF

"This address has transacted 424 times on the Bitcoin blockchain. It has received a total of 79,957.21864214 BTC ($1,911,043,890.04) and has sent a total of 0.00000000 BTC ($0.00). The current value of this address is 79,957.21864214 BTC ($1,911,043,890.04)."  [As of 29th July 2022]

Just a cool 2 billion USD sitting by itself, perhaps waiting for a rainy day.

If anyone is interested in connecting again, try:


Last blocks were mined (from my client's perspective) back in October 2019. I inadvertently staked and minted several blocks when I restarted a few days ago, but I rolled back to the 2019 version of the blockchain, just in case it has already been extended elsewhere. Last block is 0000000287521d3186d3b994519b68bc7cc1fda3b333bb6dda355758b26aa7ed

Blockchain is still chugging along, at minimum difficulty. You can mine with CPU right now (RPC: "setgenerate true")

Note that Litecoin clients are also connecting but they seem to be ignored (since it's a different blockchain). I've filtered those nodes from the list:

An application that looks for specific wallet signatures would be a better idea, since it doesn't care whether metadata (such as folder and filename information) still exists. A wallet file which cannot be undeleted by standard utilities may still have recoverable fragments littered over the drive. Looks like pywallet performs such a function.

Yeah, there's no way it could be a comprehensive list (and with user passphrases, no list could be near 100% complete anyway), so I could imagine it getting out of hand, however even a list with say 50k entries could still prevent some silly mistakes.

(I wonder if anyone has ever trolled a victim by convincing them to send funds to a provably unspendable address? The troll gains no financial benefit, but the victim still suffers a loss.)

I don't understand your point. Why would a scammer invite you to send money to an address where the private key is known by multiple people?

This is nothing to do with scamming - it's about preventing mistakes. Like people sending to the brainwallet "password", or software having a brain fart and sending to the hash of a blank string.

Original post for more context: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4768828.msg52494961#msg52494961