[Beginner question] Vanity from Xpub

[Hispo]

Even with Hierarchical Deterministic wallets?

If you don't remember the path, then you don't have access to your funds.

I see.
I guess it is this way because during the initial "discovery" a wallet does with one's public keys to find the funds, the software does not care to search beyond the first tens of unused paths. Right?

If this is the case then indeed, the problem would be more difficult than I initially assumed.

If you want your vanity addresses' private keys to be stored on a hardware wallet, then yes, this is the only way to do it since hardware wallets will not allow you to import external private keys for obvious reasons.

Trezor actually allows their users to import an already existing seed.
This was implemented to securely replace one hardware wallet for another one in case of loss/ destruction of the device but having the seed available.

Anyways, thanks for your replies. I already have a better grasp of the problem and the complexity behind it.
If there is no further activity, I may lock the topic soon.

[pooya87]

I guess it is this way because during the initial "discovery" a wallet does with one's public keys to find the funds, the software does not care to search beyond the first tens of unused paths. Right?

That's for addresses not for paths. The derivation path is either manually set by the user or decided by the wallet using the version number (in Electrum seeds for example) and other means and will be fixed. Then on that derivation path they only search X number of child addresses (like 10) and if they were used they will derive more until they find X addresses that weren't used.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I guess it is this way because during the initial "discovery" a wallet does with one's public keys to find the funds, the software does not care to search beyond the first tens of unused paths. Right?

Your wallet can't possible search every possible derivation path to look for funds. The process of doing so is just the same process as you would go through with your proposal to generate vanity addresses. It is time consuming, and the sheer number of possible paths means your wallet would still be going (and would barely have scratched the surface) when the sun engulfs the Earth in ~5 billion years' time. You need to remember the specific derivation path you used or you will likely never find it again.

Some wallets use what is known as a "gap limit", which is usually set at around 10-20. When you import a seed phrase, your wallet will scan the first 20 (for example) addresses. If it finds one which has been used, it will scan the next 20 from that address. Once it finds 20 in a row which haven't been used, it stops scanning.

Trezor actually allows their users to import an already existing seed.

A seed phrase, yes, but not individual private keys as you would have if you generated vanity address in the traditional manner.