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

[els]

oclvanitygen is also happy to search for all strings in a file specified.  doesn't seem to slow it down much.  with some work, from the info in this discussion, i was able to get it working on my 7970 at 26m/s reliably.

[ratty]

Thanks for the answers, so I can't just collect all the bounties at vanitypool in one swoop, but I can search for multiple strings when generating for myself.

[Trillium]

so I can't just collect all the bounties at vanitypool in one swoop

yes, because mining bounties does not work the same as local mining

but I can search for multiple strings when generating for myself

yes

[TierNolan]

Thanks for the answers, so I can't just collect all the bounties at vanitypool in one swoop, but I can search for multiple strings when generating for myself.

You can search for multiple bounties from the same person at once.  If someone wants multiple names, then they should submit them all at once to the site and use the same secret.

[Ente]

oclvanitygen is also happy to search for all strings in a file specified.  doesn't seem to slow it down much.  with some work, from the info in this discussion, i was able to get it working on my 7970 at 26m/s reliably.

Interesting!
What did you have to do for your 7970 to work? Driver version?
You're the first I stumbled upon who got it working, I gave up at this point.

Ente

[Ente]

Also:
Are you guys creating compressed or uncompressed vanity adresses?
Uncompressed are the original format, but compressed seems to be the standard of the future..
Obviously, at some point all programs will (have to) understand both formats - which isn't the case now.

And then: A firstbit "wasted" on the wrong format can't be used/converted in the other.

Any thoughts on this, or am I seeing problems which aren't there?

Ente

[Dabs]

@Ente, I used almost exclusively compressed keys. Simply because they save transaction size so I pay less fees or none if not needed. If I had used uncompressed keys for some of my transactions, the fee would have been double.

Compressed keys have been the standard since bitcoin-qt version 0.6+. We are at 0.8.5 now.

[Ente]

@Ente, I used almost exclusively compressed keys. Simply because they save transaction size so I pay less fees or none if not needed. If I had used uncompressed keys for some of my transactions, the fee would have been double.

Compressed keys have been the standard since bitcoin-qt version 0.6+. We are at 0.8.5 now.

Oh, good hint, I didn't even think of that yet!

I'll start "mining" compressed keys now.

/edit:
I see samr7s' vanitygen doesn't support compressed keys yet.
There seems to be at least two patched versions out there, gmaxwells' and salfters'.
Which one are you using, Dabs? Would you be so kind and share the windows bins of this? I have a remote box available for this with 7970 gpu, but no compiling stuff installed there.
Oh, is there any gpu vanitygen out there for compressed keys? In case I ever get that 7970 to run..

Thank you!

Ente

[Dabs]

I use salfters. The windows bins are here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25804.msg2296814#msg2296814

He gpg signed the md5 and sha1 hashes. I verified the hashes. Haven't checked the sig yet tho. I better do that tomorrow.

The GPU version is forked by scintil, but you need to compile it. I don't have a GPU so I never tried it yet. CPU is fast enough for my needs.

[Ente]

I use salfters. The windows bins are here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25804.msg2296814#msg2296814

He gpg signed the md5 and sha1 hashes. I verified the hashes. Haven't checked the sig yet tho. I better do that tomorrow.

The GPU version is forked by scintil, but you need to compile it. I don't have a GPU so I never tried it yet. CPU is fast enough for my needs.

Thank you for the info!

Ente

[ratty]

TIL there's such a thing as compressed addresses. Is there any good docs on this? I can't find anything that explains it on the bitcoin.it wiki, maybe its called something else. The only mention is on this page https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Private_key where it says you can tell if a private key is for a compressed key because it starts with an L or K.

From what I've read in random places, compressed are 34 characters (including the 1), right? Every one of my public keys are that long, and I used the normal oclvanitygen to make them, so how much shorter would a compressed public key be?

[Ente]

TIL there's such a thing as compressed addresses. Is there any good docs on this? I can't find anything that explains it on the bitcoin.it wiki, maybe its called something else. The only mention is on this page https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Private_key where it says you can tell if a private key is for a compressed key because it starts with an L or K.

From what I've read in random places, compressed are 34 characters (including the 1), right? Every one of my public keys are that long, and I used the normal oclvanitygen to make them, so how much shorter would a compressed public key be?

The adress, which we see in our clients, are always the same length and look the same no matter if the underlying key is compressed or uncompressed. I can't go into more detail without writing more false than true statements ;-)
(ocl)vanitygen creates only uncompressed keys/adresses, unless you patch it or use a fork from other developers.

Ente

[kjj]

TIL there's such a thing as compressed addresses. Is there any good docs on this? I can't find anything that explains it on the bitcoin.it wiki, maybe its called something else. The only mention is on this page https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Private_key where it says you can tell if a private key is for a compressed key because it starts with an L or K.

From what I've read in random places, compressed are 34 characters (including the 1), right? Every one of my public keys are that long, and I used the normal oclvanitygen to make them, so how much shorter would a compressed public key be?

Type "compressed" into the search box from the Dev & Tech page.  You won't be disappointed.

[Dabs]

Compressed keys take up less space in the blockchain, so you don't contribute to the bloat. A compressed key is just a way of storing a public key in fewer bytes (33 instead of 65). There is no real reason to use uncompressed keys anymore except if your client can't use it. In which case, I strongly recommend that you switch to a client that does allow compressed keys, such as the bitcoind / bitcoin-qt client.

Here is an example of an uncompressed key:
044f355bdcb7cc0af728ef3cceb9615d90684bb5b2ca5f859ab0f0b704075871aa385b6b1b8ead8 09ca67454d9683fcf2ba03456d6fe2c4abe2b07f0fbdbb2f1c1

Here is an example of the same key in compressed format:
034f355bdcb7cc0af728ef3cceb9615d90684bb5b2ca5f859ab0f0b704075871aa

Notice the length.

[ratty]

I couldn't find a way to make blockchain.info make a compressed address, so I just made a new address in bitcoin-qt, exported the key from that, then importied it into blockchain.info, and I get this:

Compressed private keys are currently not supported using the Android app, iPhone app or Merchant API. If you import a compressed private key directly you will not be able to spend the funds at that address using the previously listed devices.

Kinda scary if I'm doing things in a way in which some people can't get my coins.

Type "compressed" into the search box from the Dev & Tech page.  You won't be disappointed.

Thanks for the pointer, but I can't figure out what you mean, there's no Dev & Tech page on the wiki or forums. In case its not obvious, I'm a noob, so sorry if this is a really dumb thing to not know about.

[The00Dustin]

Kinda scary if I'm doing things in a way in which some people can't get my coins.

A compressed private key is what you send from, so the warning is just telling you that you couldn't take that private key and use it to send funds with the current versions of the listed programs.  The only reason that would be concerning is if the Merchant API were the only way to send coins from whatever you imported to, but it isn't, because you can import the same private key into something else that does support it and use that to send.  IIRC, the funds go to the recipient using the address if it hasn't been seen on the network before and a public key if the address has been seen before.  I don't know if public keys can be compressed, but if they can, and there is a compressed public key on the network, it implies that the recipient can use that key.

[gadman2]

Is there a way to easily calculate the difficulty (without mining for it) through a web-app or what not?

I'd really like to reiterate this if it's possible.

[kjj]

I couldn't find a way to make blockchain.info make a compressed address, so I just made a new address in bitcoin-qt, exported the key from that, then importied it into blockchain.info, and I get this:

Compressed private keys are currently not supported using the Android app, iPhone app or Merchant API. If you import a compressed private key directly you will not be able to spend the funds at that address using the previously listed devices.

Kinda scary if I'm doing things in a way in which some people can't get my coins.

Type "compressed" into the search box from the Dev & Tech page.  You won't be disappointed.

Thanks for the pointer, but I can't figure out what you mean, there's no Dev & Tech page on the wiki or forums. In case its not obvious, I'm a noob, so sorry if this is a really dumb thing to not know about.

The forum that this thread is in is "Development & Technical Discussion".

[els]

oclvanitygen is also happy to search for all strings in a file specified.  doesn't seem to slow it down much.  with some work, from the info in this discussion, i was able to get it working on my 7970 at 26m/s reliably.

Interesting!
What did you have to do for your 7970 to work? Driver version?
You're the first I stumbled upon who got it working, I gave up at this point.

Ente

i am on SuSE Linux 12.2. using vanitygen-0.21.tar.gz.  fiddled with many versions of  amd-catalyst 12.10 and below (above failed to install for me).  probably landed on 12.10 though i don't recall for sure. 

***the real issue*** was that oclvanitygen failed to operate correctly due to loop optimization that needed to be turned off by commenting the following 2 lines out of  oclengine.c

                      if (dvn && strstr(dvn, "cl_amd_media_ops"))
                              quirks |= VG_OCL_AMD_BFI_INT;

[Ente]

oclvanitygen is also happy to search for all strings in a file specified.  doesn't seem to slow it down much.  with some work, from the info in this discussion, i was able to get it working on my 7970 at 26m/s reliably.

Interesting!
What did you have to do for your 7970 to work? Driver version?
You're the first I stumbled upon who got it working, I gave up at this point.

Ente

i am on SuSE Linux 12.2. using vanitygen-0.21.tar.gz.  fiddled with many versions of  amd-catalyst 12.10 and below (above failed to install for me).  probably landed on 12.10 though i don't recall for sure. 

***the real issue*** was that oclvanitygen failed to operate correctly due to loop optimization that needed to be turned off by commenting the following 2 lines out of  oclengine.c

                      if (dvn && strstr(dvn, "cl_amd_media_ops"))
                              quirks |= VG_OCL_AMD_BFI_INT;

Thank you for the details!
I'll give it another try eventually.

Ente