Is it possible to create ASIC customized bitcoin address generator?

[Synchronice]

Once upon a time people were mining bitcoin with CPU and GPU, while the last one is still used to mine altcoins. CPUs and GPUs are designed to cope with a multitude of calculation types, so, they weren't the most effective hardwares for that purposes. Afterwards, China-based computer hardware manufacturer called Canaan Creative invented the first application-specific integrate circuits, i.e. ASIC miners.

To generate customized bitcoin address, you need power CPU and/or GPU and use softwares like Vanitygen, VanitySearch. Your GPU has more hashrate than your CPU to generate bitcoin address just like in mining and in other cases. Now, my question is following: Can we create an ASIC customized bitcoin address generator? An equipment with only one aim, to generate bitcoin addresses?

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[DaveF]

Yes. You can create a ASIC to do just about anything you want given enough funding.
But.....
Will off the shelf consumer hardware still be better? Even if it's a couple of orders of magnitude slower, the R&D and production and manufacturing and testing and so on might wind up being cheaper.

Even if tomorrow someone magically snapped their fingers and it came into being and millions of these units were produced the odds of finding a funded address are still so close to zero as to be zero.

-Dave

[digaran]

Yes it's possible, but why do you need so many addresses when you can generate trillions in a few hours using a simple GPU, unless you are looking for a way to brute force addresses. To perform a successful brute force attack on an address, you'd need to know the exact bit range and the range should be very small.
No manufacturer would waste their time and resources for such futile endeavour. If you have an idea it'd be great to share it with us.  

~dig

[pooya87]

Design and manufacturing of an application-specific integrated circuit is very complicated, time consuming and expensive. So there needs to be a great incentive to do so. That is why they manufacture ASICs for mining some cryptocurrencies with different algorithms, because there is an incentive there and don't bother for some other altcoins since there is no incentive.

It's the same for "vanity addresses". There is no incentive to create such a hardware since that won't sell. Nobody is going to pay thousands of dollars to buy a hardware that could create a pointless address.

[digaran]

The answer is yes, but you probably want to consider existance multiple format of Bitcoin address and uncompressed keys on legacy address. Cost-wise, i expect buying few FPGA and hire FPGA programmer probably would be better choice. FPGA usage on cryptography field is somehow common. And it seems there are few relevant research about FPGA usage on ECDSA cryptography (which used by Bitcoin)[1-2].

[1] [url]https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9912061]https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9912061][url]https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9912061[/url]
[2] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8641730

That site doesn't show the content even after registering account, so much for a digital library. Anyways are there any other source for such docs I could check?

[o_e_l_e_o]

The answers above are all right, but maybe this is an XY problem? What are you trying to achieve with such a device?

Using it to try to find a random address collision is pointless. Even a device which is trillions of times faster than current GPUs will fail to find a single collision before the death of the planet.

Or are you just desperate for a really unique looking vanity address?

[Synchronice]

Even if tomorrow someone magically snapped their fingers and it came into being and millions of these units were produced the odds of finding a funded address are still so close to zero as to be zero.

-Dave

If someone somehow invents it, over time he may dramatically improve it. For example, first ASIC antminer called S1 had a hashrate of 180 GH/s. Now we have Bitcoin Miner S19 XP Hyd. with a hashrate of 250000 GH/s. Its hashrate is 1388 times higher then the hashrate of S1.

Definitely, one needs tons of money to fund the research and this should be done silently, without leaking any info. In 2010 devices could rarely go higher than 1 GH/s, modern devices offer up to 250000 times more GH/s. But if we somehow invent quantum ASIC, we may hack addresses.

Okay, I know I went into science fiction, just wanted to know if its possible to create an ASIC miner for customized bitcoin address generator. My question is answered, many thanks!

[stompix]

If someone somehow invents it, over time he may dramatically improve it. For example, first ASIC antminer called S1 had a hashrate of 180 GH/s. Now we have Bitcoin Miner S19 XP Hyd. with a hashrate of 250000 GH/s. Its hashrate is 1388 times higher then the hashrate of S1.

Those numbers might be misleading, first, the S1 had 64 chips in total, the S19 Xp Hydro has about 10 times more, the s1 was munching 180W the s19 is doing 5500W. The first BM1380 chip was 55 nm, currently, they are down to 7nm , there is not so much speed to be gained, and you can see that in power efficiency is starting to slow down, in 2014 the s3 was at 1j/gh, in 2017 the s9 was at 0.1j/Gh in 2022 we're down to 0.021j/Gh, from 10x in 3 years to 5x in 5 years and going further down.

There will be further improvement but nothing "dramatically", much like BTC price, it has done x30 000 in 10 years but doing it again? 

But if we somehow invent quantum ASIC, we may hack addresses.

No! Simply, no! 

[Synchronice]

But if we somehow invent quantum ASIC, we may hack addresses.

No! Simply, no!  

Why not, if we create a machine that has capability to calculate processes with a tremendous speed, then why not. Scientists even talk about passing information between  photons on computer chips without them being physically linked. Everything is possible, we just need time. But one thing that I can say for sure is that there will come time when current security will be broken and bitcoin or alternative currencies will have to implement something different.

Even if tomorrow someone magically snapped their fingers and it came into being and millions of these units were produced the odds of finding a funded address are still so close to zero as to be zero.

-Dave

If someone somehow invents it, over time he may dramatically improve it. For example, first ASIC antminer called S1 had a hashrate of 180 GH/s. Now we have Bitcoin Miner S19 XP Hyd. with a hashrate of 250000 GH/s. Its hashrate is 1388 times higher then the hashrate of S1.

--snip--

It's flawed comparison since S19 XP Hyd. has higher watt usage. Better comparison would be comparing GH/W where S1 has ~0.6 GH/W while S19 XP Hyd. has ~48 GH/W which means 80x energy efficiency.

I didn't keep that in mind because my main priority was comparison of hashrates.

[digaran]

But if we somehow invent quantum ASIC, we may hack addresses.

Inventing a quantum computer to steal bitcoins?
Without knowing the public key is near impossible.
Having the public key, knowing the range, having a few million TB RAM, will cost millions to find. Hence the importance of distributing your coins across several addresses and discarding an address after the first transaction, addresses should be treated as dynamic pin numbers for credit cards, they are only valid for 2 minutes.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Hence the importance of distributing your coins across several addresses and discarding an address after the first transaction

Not reusing an address? Sure.
Discarding an address? Nope.

I still have copies of every private key for every address I've ever used, even ones which I used once years ago and have never and will never use again. Why discard them? The files/back ups already exist so it takes no effort on my part to keep them, and there is always the chance that I accidentally reuse an address or a third party accidentally pays me to an old address, at which point those coins would be lost forever had I discarded those keys.

In the words of Satoshi:

Sigh... why delete a wallet instead of moving it aside and keeping the old copy just in case?  You should never delete a wallet.

[digaran]

Hence the importance of distributing your coins across several addresses and discarding an address after the first transaction

Not reusing an address? Sure.
Discarding an address? Nope.

I still have copies of every private key for every address I've ever used, even ones which I used once years ago and have never and will never use again. Why discard them? The files/back ups already exist so it takes no effort on my part to keep them, and there is always the chance that I accidentally reuse an address or a third party accidentally pays me to an old address, at which point those coins would be lost forever had I discarded those keys.

In the words of Satoshi:

Sigh... why delete a wallet instead of moving it aside and keeping the old copy just in case?  You should never delete a wallet.

I didn't mean throwing them away, discarding an address after one transaction means never using that address again, especially for large amounts, actually reusing an address for small amounts is more convenient. Ordinary people have nothing to worry about. Using the term "discarding" was a bad choice of words.

[Synchronice]

But if we somehow invent quantum ASIC, we may hack addresses.

Inventing a quantum computer to steal bitcoins?
Without knowing the public key is near impossible.
Having the public key, knowing the range, having a few million TB RAM, will cost millions to find. Hence the importance of distributing your coins across several addresses and discarding an address after the first transaction, addresses should be treated as dynamic pin numbers for credit cards, they are only valid for 2 minutes.

When someone makes a transaction, public key is revealed too. So, one can easily get list of bitcoin addresses with a lot of coins that had spent some coins at past.

In the words of Satoshi:

Sigh... why delete a wallet instead of moving it aside and keeping the old copy just in case?  You should never delete a wallet.

Thanks for including original URL in quote. I just discovered that once upon a time there was a person who had 20-30% of the network's CPU power.
But I don't agree with the opinion that it's good to keep all of your used wallets. The more info you collect and save about yourself, more information will be leaked in case something bad happens. Though, this situation is highly individual to my mind.

[PrimeNumber7]

Or are you just desperate for a really unique looking vanity address?

Vanity addresses are really the only realistic use-case for an ASIC that generates bitcoin addresses.

I admit that I often violate this recommendation, but bitcoin addresses really shouldn't be reused, and vanity addresses encourage people to break this rule.

[NotATether]

Or are you just desperate for a really unique looking vanity address?

Vanity addresses are really the only realistic use-case for an ASIC that generates bitcoin addresses.

You can also make an ASIC for generating vanity addresses for many different coins at once.

Or, just implement the ECDLP and elliptic curves, and then package the address somewhere else, as you'll need to keep the address hash code on the ASIC in order to make a comparison.

[PrimeNumber7]

Or are you just desperate for a really unique looking vanity address?

Vanity addresses are really the only realistic use-case for an ASIC that generates bitcoin addresses.

You can also make an ASIC for generating vanity addresses for many different coins at once.

Or, just implement the ECDLP and elliptic curves, and then package the address somewhere else, as you'll need to keep the address hash code on the ASIC in order to make a comparison.

Perhaps, although doing so would be less efficient. I think the point remains that this will encourage people to reuse addresses when doing so is a bad practice

[BlackHatCoiner]

Discarding an address? Nope.

And I thought I was the only one who's kept everything since day 1 in Bitcoin. In addition to what you said, keeping all your private keys, seed phrases etc., is important because you might need to sign a message from one of them someday. I know, it sounds very improbable, but not impossible. Somewhere, at some corner of the Internet, you might have posted an address that is found years later. Someone might try to impersonate you, after 10 years or even more. Signing a message from such address can be lifesaving; completely paranoid, I know, but there's a non-zero chance.

We live in a world where the Internet is about 30 years old. Who knows what historians of the 22nd century will look up and which purpose they will have in their Internet.

And ultimately, it costs practically nothing to store a wallet. Even if you don't bear in mind the above, you gain absolutely nothing by freeing up the space a wallet takes (in both physical and digital formats).