Vanitygen: Vanity bitcoin address generator/miner [v0.22]

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

I was wondering what you guys thought of the idea of making a legitimate pool for vanity address mining.
I was looking into the code for it, and it seems pretty workable.
There just needs to be a way to do proof of work with vanityminer. It's the same theory as shares with bitcoin though, so not too complex.

If you are talking about actually mining PRE-EXISTING addresses in their full form, not just small patterns, sure, yes. But if you are talking about just patterns like 1MyAddy, then there is already a pool, it's http://vanitypool.appspot.com

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[Mylon]

You actually got keys? it works on mine, but gives bad output. (hence me needing to rebuild it from scratch)

Yep, the key I got out of it seems to be legit, for address 1dazzrAbMqNu6cUwh2dtYckNygG7jKs8S

vanitygen (cpu only) works for me, oclvanitygen (gpu) gives crap output 2 Mkey on cpu vs 28 Mkey on gpu... so wish I could use my gpu.

[Kontakt]

I was wondering what you guys thought of the idea of making a legitimate pool for vanity address mining.
I was looking into the code for it, and it seems pretty workable.
There just needs to be a way to do proof of work with vanityminer. It's the same theory as shares with bitcoin though, so not too complex.

If you are talking about actually mining PRE-EXISTING addresses in their full form, not just small patterns, sure, yes. But if you are talking about just patterns like 1MyAddy, then there is already a pool, it's http://vanitypool.appspot.com

That's not a pool, that's a joblist board. It's exactly like solo mining bitcoin. For people with low hash, it's useless. Vanity address mining is significantly more profitable that mining, in theory, but for me any of the addresses listed will take ~30 days for a 50% cdf. I can't mine for 30+ days with no return.

The fundamental thing that I'm saying vanitygen is missing is pooled rewards, with pooled mining. I was suggesting a pool that pays that same way a bitcoin pool does, with percentile shares per address. So everyone could be working on the same address simultaneously, and when someone gets it,the rewards are distributed to the miners based on work put in, rather than the current way of a bunch of people going solo, and one person getting the entire reward.

[fizzisist]

I was wondering what you guys thought of the idea of making a legitimate pool for vanity address mining.
I was looking into the code for it, and it seems pretty workable.
There just needs to be a way to do proof of work with vanityminer. It's the same theory as shares with bitcoin though, so not too complex.

If you are talking about actually mining PRE-EXISTING addresses in their full form, not just small patterns, sure, yes. But if you are talking about just patterns like 1MyAddy, then there is already a pool, it's http://vanitypool.appspot.com

That's not a pool, that's a joblist board. It's exactly like solo mining bitcoin. For people with low hash, it's useless. Vanity address mining is significantly more profitable that mining, in theory, but for me any of the addresses listed will take ~30 days for a 50% cdf. I can't mine for 30+ days with no return.

The fundamental thing that I'm saying vanitygen is missing is pooled rewards, with pooled mining. I was suggesting a pool that pays that same way a bitcoin pool does, with percentile shares per address. So everyone could be working on the same address simultaneously, and when someone gets it,the rewards are distributed to the miners based on work put in, rather than the current way of a bunch of people going solo, and one person getting the entire reward.

How would you structure a proof of work? My only idea is to accept partial matches to the pattern as proof if work, and pay earn a share percentage for that proportional to how "close" it is to the desired pattern. This seems complicated, but probably possible. I need to spend some time thinking about how the math would work out.

I've actually been working on building my own site for this recently, but have started by building it simply as a job list as well, to get that working first. I'm calling it a "market place" instead of a pool, since I think that name is more apt. I'm happy to hear any other ideas on how to implement pooled mining, while still minimizing risk for the pool operator. I might start a new thread for the discussion.

[nimda]

I was wondering what you guys thought of the idea of making a legitimate pool for vanity address mining.
I was looking into the code for it, and it seems pretty workable.
There just needs to be a way to do proof of work with vanityminer. It's the same theory as shares with bitcoin though, so not too complex.

If you are talking about actually mining PRE-EXISTING addresses in their full form, not just small patterns, sure, yes. But if you are talking about just patterns like 1MyAddy, then there is already a pool, it's http://vanitypool.appspot.com

That's not a pool, that's a joblist board. It's exactly like solo mining bitcoin. For people with low hash, it's useless. Vanity address mining is significantly more profitable that mining, in theory, but for me any of the addresses listed will take ~30 days for a 50% cdf. I can't mine for 30+ days with no return.

The fundamental thing that I'm saying vanitygen is missing is pooled rewards, with pooled mining. I was suggesting a pool that pays that same way a bitcoin pool does, with percentile shares per address. So everyone could be working on the same address simultaneously, and when someone gets it,the rewards are distributed to the miners based on work put in, rather than the current way of a bunch of people going solo, and one person getting the entire reward.

How would you structure a proof of work?

Mining vanity addresses is almost exactly what Bitcoin mining is. For Bitcoin, you're looking for a vanity hash; it must start with a certain number of zeroes. Addresses are, in essence, hashes. The proof of work, a partial match, is not really much different.

[jacky4566]

Hey guys. Im getting an error with Oclvanityminer64
This is the error:

Code:

Get work request failed: Peer certificate cannot be authenticated with given CA certificates

And this is the launch code: (On Win8 BTW)

Code:

ECHO Starting Vanity miner
oclvanityminer64.exe -u http://vanitypool.appspot.com -a 1CsMpcqmm9CDXU8j26E3w4iCdgt8Xbiqsi -d 0
timeout 30

Any ideas?

[jaywaka2713]

try https://vanitypool.appspot.com/getWork as your URL

[jacky4566]

Same error. I should also point out that this only happens with the 64bit version so that just adds to the confusion.

[fizzisist]

I started a thread to discuss ideas for pooled mining of vanity addresses. Please let me know if you have any ideas!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=184132

[bit_NINj4]

Also, the private key may be leaked to your shell history file.  Kill your shell and shred your shell history file after importing.

How does one clean the shell history?

[roy7]

Same error. I should also point out that this only happens with the 64bit version so that just adds to the confusion.

Same problem here, but I get it with 32 or 64 bit versions.

Googling the error it's a standard SSL error response. Some solutions for other applications:

http://curl.haxx.se/docs/sslcerts.html

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14566864/peer-certificate-cannot-be-authenticated-with-known-ca-certificates-how-to-reso

Verbose output:

Code:

* timeout on name lookup is not supported
* About to connect() to vanitypool.appspot.com port 443 (#0)
*   Trying 74.125.137.141...
* Connected to vanitypool.appspot.com (74.125.137.141) port 443 (#0)
* libcurl is now using a weak random seed!
* SSL certificate problem: unable to get local issuer certificate
* Closing connection 0
Get work request failed: Peer certificate cannot be authenticated with given CA certificates

Tried the ENV variables from this:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14286265/how-to-use-ssl-cert-file-for-openssl-windows-openssl-1-0-1c

with no luck. Also set PATH to the directory the .pem file is in. I'm betting Windows 8 is part of the problem since the earlier guy uses it also.

[PieStick]

Could somebody post an up to date vanitygen binary for OS X? I do not have have a fast enough connection to download the dev-tools right now. Thanks.

[fizzisist]

Also, the private key may be leaked to your shell history file.  Kill your shell and shred your shell history file after importing.

How does one clean the shell history?

After importing the private key, run

Code:

history -c

And close that terminal window before someone can sneak up behind you and take a picture of the screen with a spy camera hidden in their bowtie.

[Forrie]

Sorry for the newbie question but what happens if vanitygen throws up an address already in use by someone else? or did I miss the bit where is said it won't do this?

[gyverlb]

Sorry for the newbie question but what happens if vanitygen throws up an address already in use by someone else? or did I miss the bit where is said it won't do this?

If it does, the resulting private key gives access to all the coins stored by this address.

The chances of it happening are so small it probably will never happen before the extinction of the human race even if Bitcoin becomes its primary means of storing and exchanging money.

[Addz]

I'm not very good with running command line stuff and lack of a helpful readme or sample command lines isn't helping my cause much

I'm trying to create for myself a case sensitive vanity address using my gfx card.

If someone would be so kind as to throw up a sample command line that I could copy I'd be very grateful. 

[coastermonger]

I'm not very good with running command line stuff and lack of a helpful readme or sample command lines isn't helping my cause much

I'm trying to create for myself a case sensitive vanity address using my gfx card.

If someone would be so kind as to throw up a sample command line that I could copy I'd be very grateful.

I want to +1 this because I too have been unable to get the kind of output I want.  Is it supposed to just generate a .oclbin file? What do I do with that?

[chanba]

Some days ago someone posted a Mac download for a vanity generator. I've had the thread deleted by the mods, but the poster was a brand new user and the only user who commented was also a new user. The software presents itself as a GUI to vanitygen, but in reality seems to harvest the generated addresses and keys, and upon receiving a certain amount of BTC the credit is transferred to a different address. I'm exposing this although it makes me look like a turd since it stole 14 BTC from me this morning.

The software can still be downloaded from https://github.com/trevory/bitvanity. I've downloaded the source and will look for some clues, but of course the precompiled binary can be something completely different.

In a moment of absolute stupidity and after having read about and being excited about vanity address generation, I generated a couple of addresses with this app and transferred some hard earned BTC into the address. Almost immediately all the bitcoins disappeared.

I've tried again with a much smaller amount and so far nothing has happened. It clearly triggers above a certain amount (the only other transaction to the receiving address is 2.09 BTC) in order to stay undetected. They may be using different addresses to receive and the limits might be variable or the thefts random.

The transaction ID is: ad46e931ff3ac203ed522c9fcba8a6b156ac4b0d73f3079b2b8e158d5e1be861

In the end 14 BTC lost, but a valuable lesson learned. Hopefully we can shut this scam down from the very beginning. If someone else wants to verify my findings, be my guest.

Obviously also now have to wipe the machine where I ran the software.

--chanba
1Hs6emZobgr5NqW1LGa2vRP5NvGwrYf84w (No vanity nor BTC left...)

Edit: The source code version is clean and has nothing scary. I was hoping to find something in the compiled binary and found this, so it's very clearly malware:
/Users/satoshinakamoto/Desktop/BitVanity Hacked/BitVanity/main.m/

[Addz]

Some days ago someone posted a Mac download for a vanity generator. I've had the thread deleted by the mods, but the poster was a brand new user and the only user who commented was also a new user. The software presents itself as a GUI to vanitygen, but in reality seems to harvest the generated addresses and keys, and upon receiving a certain amount of BTC the credit is transferred to a different address. I'm exposing this although it makes me look like a turd since it stole 14 BTC from me this morning.

The software can still be downloaded from https://github.com/trevory/bitvanity. I've downloaded the source and will look for some clues, but of course the precompiled binary can be something completely different.

In a moment of absolute stupidity and after having read about and being excited about vanity address generation, I generated a couple of addresses with this app and transferred some hard earned BTC into the address. Almost immediately all the bitcoins disappeared.

I've tried again with a much smaller amount and so far nothing has happened. It clearly triggers above a certain amount (the only other transaction to the receiving address is 2.09 BTC) in order to stay undetected. They may be using different addresses to receive and the limits might be variable or the thefts random.

The transaction ID is: ad46e931ff3ac203ed522c9fcba8a6b156ac4b0d73f3079b2b8e158d5e1be861

In the end 14 BTC lost, but a valuable lesson learned. Hopefully we can shut this scam down from the very beginning. If someone else wants to verify my findings, be my guest.

Obviously also now have to wipe the machine where I ran the software.

--chanba
1Hs6emZobgr5NqW1LGa2vRP5NvGwrYf84w (No vanity nor BTC left...)

Edit: The source code version is clean and has nothing scary. I was hoping to find something in the compiled binary and found this, so it's very clearly malware:
/Users/satoshinakamoto/Desktop/BitVanity Hacked/BitVanity/main.m/

Hmmmm this has me thinking of a new way to do cold storage.

Dowload a vanity gen to a pc. 
Disconnect PC from the internet. 
Generate a new address and private key. 
Keep a hard copy of the Address and private key, or perhaps on a usb stick that you only use on offline computers
You could then send coins to that address even though it wouldn't be linked to a wallet anywhere.
Then when you finally want to take the coins out, add the private key to a wallet at that time and away you go.

[Mooshire]

When I run vanitygen64, it operates at top speed for a few seconds (1.2 MK/s) then drops down to about half. This only happens usually while searching for 5 character prefixes (after the 1). Can anyone help me with this?
Windows 8 64 bit
AMD 8120 8 core


Also, how to use oclvanitygen? When I do
oclvanitygen.exe -d 0 1test
It just returns a list of devices. Help?