Generating Vanity Addresses

[blackhathasher]

I have been generating a vanity address and it has been running for almost a month now and reporting 75% in 3 more days (est.)

Is this normal? How long does it usually take? Have I done something wrong?

[1714890326]

1714890326

[1714890326]

1714890326

[lemfuture]

notin wrong. it usually long a wait

[byt411]

Nothing is wrong, what prefix are you trying to generate?
With a normal PC it's really hard to generate them.

[bitbudget]

Depends on your hardware and the number of symbols you chose.

[KaChingCoinDev]

Normal for 6 Characters. You have more patience than me

[bitbudget]

Try picking 2-3 symbol addresses and see how it works before trying longer ones.

[blackhathasher]

Awesome! Thanks for the feedback... I just wanted to make sure I wasn't spinning my wheels and would have to start over again...

I loaded the vanitygen on one of my unused servers in my data center and turned it loose finding the pattern but when it was taking so long I was afraid I may have done something dumb and would have to start over again.

Whew!

[blackhathasher]

i have a pretty specific address with 9 characters.

i just checked and see that i am right at 17 days and will be at 75% in 2.3 days...

i suspect the next 25% may take another 10-20 days.

[DannyHamilton]

Awesome! Thanks for the feedback... I just wanted to make sure I wasn't spinning my wheels and would have to start over again...

There is no "starting over".  The program doesn't "make progress".

It continuously generates random addresses and then checks to see if they match you pattern.  Depending on how long and specific you pattern is, it could take seconds, hours, days, months, years, decades, centuries, or millienia before it happens to stumble across the pattern you are looking for.

If you stop and restart it, it doesn't "lose its place" or have to "start over".  When you restart it, it simply goes back to generating random addresses and checking each one to see if it matches the pattern.  Sort of like flipping a coin and trying to get 25 heads in a row.  If you stop flipping the coin for a while and then start up again the coin doesn't "remember" where you left off or "lose its place".  It doesn't have to "start over".

I loaded the vanitygen on one of my unused servers in my data center and turned it loose finding the pattern but when it was taking so long I was afraid I may have done something dumb and would have to start over again.

Whew!

Depending on how long and complex of a pattern you are trying to match, you very well may have "done something dumb". I'm a bit surprised that is calculated an estimate of 3 days, but hasn't found anything yet after a month.  Perhaps the time estimation has an error? Or maybe you're just really unlucky.

[blackhathasher]

ahh that makes sense...

current probability is at 68.9% with 75% estimated in a little over 2 days.

[DannyHamilton]

i have a pretty specific address with 9 characters.

Wow!

If you are particular about upper vs. lower case, (and if I've got my math right) that should be an average of about 1 match out of every 7,500,000,000,000,000 addresses generated.

Not sure how many addresses your server can calculate per second, but if it can do 250,000,000 addresses per second, that should find on average about one match per year.

[lnternet]

vanity is best outsourced, so when searching you are not just searching for your one address but for all requested ones at once

[blackhathasher]

looks like i am averaging about 1000K keys/s on a quad core opteron 2.51GHz proc

and no i have no particulars on upper and lower case. just the nine digits.

[lnternet]

digits or characters?

[blackhathasher]

vanity is best outsourced, so when searching you are not just searching for your one address but for all requested ones at once

what do you mean??

[blackhathasher]

digits or characters?

1xxxxxxxx  (alpha characters)

[DannyHamilton]

digits or characters?

1xxxxxxxx  (alpha characters)

That will reduce the search space significantly. (although the 1000k per second is quite a bit slower than the 250,000k that I had based my calculations on).

Good luck.  9 characters is a lot to match.  I don't think I've seen anyone yet with a 9 character vanity address.

[blackhathasher]

digits or characters?

1xxxxxxxx  (alpha characters)

That will reduce the search space significantly. (although the 1000k per second is quite a bit slower than the 250,000k that I had based my calculations on).

Good luck.  9 characters is a lot to match.  I don't think I've seen anyone yet with a 9 character vanity address.

it sounds like i can just run vanitygen and several machines to increase my odds and there isn't necessarily a duplication of work... just luck.
 

[lnternet]

Well assuming you want any with 8 a or A like

1aaaaaaaa
1AaaAaaaA
1AAAAAAAA

You have a 2^8/58^8 chance to hit per round. Thats about 10^-12. If you run 10^6 per second, you need about 10^6 seconds on average to find it. That's about 12 days. Since we rounded a bit, somewhere from a day to few weeks should be normal.

[DannyHamilton]

it sounds like i can just run vanitygen and several machines to increase my odds and there isn't necessarily a duplication of work... just luck.

Correct.

[giszmo]

vanity is best outsourced, so when searching you are not just searching for your one address but for all requested ones at once

what do you mean??

If you want address hello and I want Hallo, somebody could search for both and give you and me the respective results.

AAAHHHHH!!!!! Bitcoin address generation is best never outsourced! Why did 10 replies not mention this? It is utterly stupid to trust any service to generate save addresses for you as there is no way of knowing if he deleted his copy or not. Once he gets cancer or turns into an asshole, he digs out these addresses and spends your money.

[blackhathasher]

AAAHHHHH!!!!! Bitcoin address generation is best never outsourced! Why did 10 replies not mention this? It is utterly stupid to trust any service to generate save addresses for you as there is no way of knowing if he deleted his copy or not. Once he gets cancer or turns into an asshole, he digs out these addresses and spends your money.

yeah this much is pretty obvious...

i was curious though if there was some time of secured service providing this... i still probably would never trust it, however i was curious.

i will continue to hash away at my own vanity address on my own servers..

after having the basic logic explained (which i probably should have grokked from the start) i will just disperse vanitygen across a few dozen servers and see which one comes up the winner.

[DannyHamilton]

If you want address hello and I want Hallo, somebody could search for both and give you and me the respective results.

Exactly.  There are services that provide this.

It is utterly stupid to trust any service to generate save addresses for you as there is no way of knowing if he deleted his copy or not. Once he gets cancer or turns into an asshole, he digs out these addresses and spends your money.

AAAHHHHH!!!!! Bitcoin address generation is best never outsourced! Why did 10 replies not mention this?

Because it isn't necessarily true.  When done properly, it is possible for someone to generate an address for you without knowing what the private key is.

1) You generate a random 256-bit integer less than the SECP256k1 generator. You keep this secret. (Effectively, an ECDSA private key.)

2) You compute the corresponding EC point on the SECP256k1 curve. You share this with whoever is finding the vanity address for you. (This is the ECDSA public key that corresponds to the private key you generated in step one.)

3) The person working out the vanity address for you tries various 256-bit integers also less than the SECP256k1 generator. They compute the corresponding EC point and add it to the EC point you sent them (from step two). They then hash this and see if it produces the desired vanity address. They repeat this over and over until they find a 256-bit integer that works. They give this integer to you. (And the world, it need not be kept secret.)

4) You add the 256-bit integer they found to the 256-bit integer you generated in step 1 and reduce it modulo the SECP256k1 generator.

5) You now have the private key, and they don't. (And you can prove that they cannot generate the private key from just the information you gave them unless ECDSA is fundamentally broken.)

In ECDSA, you convert a private key to a public key by multiplying by the generator. Division is impossible.

The vanity address generation scheme above works because: (A+B)*G = AG + BG

You generate A and AG, but give them only AG.

They try various different B's, calculating the AG+BG for each one to find the right one for the vanity address.

They give you B. You can now compute A+B (the secret key corresponding to the public key AG+BG) but nobody else can since they do not know A.

Computing A from AG would mean breaking ECDSA fundamentally. All you gave them is AG, an ECDSA public key. If they could figure out the private key to your new account (A+B), they could also figure out A. So if they could figure out the private key to your vanity account, they could also figure out the private key you created in step 1. But all you gave them was the corresponding public key. So any compromise of the vanity account would mean they could compromise a private key given only its corresponding public key.

For one such service, see here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=84569.0

[lnternet]

AAAHHHHH!!!!! Bitcoin address generation is best never outsourced!

Good thinking, but no, it's possible to do trustless. Crypto is wonderful technology

[blackhathasher]

AND...... I found it!

[KaChingCoinDev]

AND...... I found it!

Cool! What address did you find?

[blackhathasher]

1BLackHAtGEKmcioF8pA88XPbEkBf8Hf12

It took about 25 days from start to finish...

[Injust]

1BLackHAtGEKmcioF8pA88XPbEkBf8Hf12

It took about 25 days from start to finish...

Damn that QR code tho.

[blackhathasher]

well if you have any extra bitcoin you want to let me hold on to just send them to that address... k... thanks!

[Elwar]

Did you mean for it to say Black Hat Geek?

[BunsenBurner]

Did you mean for it to say Black Hat Geek?

Or are you trying to find address with "blackhat" and find the "gek" part accidentally?

[blackhathasher]

Or are you trying to find address with "blackhat" and find the "gek" part accidentally?

Yep... Talk about awesome!

[tocoolforschool]

9 characters !? Good luck

I thought I was hard core when I searched for 6 lol.

[blackhathasher]

9 characters !? Good luck

I thought I was hard core when I searched for 6 lol.

Already found it. Took just 25 days. If I do it again I think I am going to distribute the job across many more servers in my data center to increase my luck and perhaps do it faster next time.

[Pony789]

9 characters !? Good luck

I thought I was hard core when I searched for 6 lol.

Already found it. Took just 25 days. If I do it again I think I am going to distribute the job across many more servers in my data center to increase my luck and perhaps do it faster next time.

9 characters vanity address found with just one server in just 25 days. That's is pretty lucky

[Brangdon]

If I do it again I think I am going to distribute the job across many more servers in my data center to increase my luck and perhaps do it faster next time.

Do you have a decent graphics card? If so, did you use the version of vanitygen that exploits it? Doing so can make a big difference. On my machine, generating 1Brangdon gets to 50% after 511 days with vanitygen, 310 days with vanitygen64, and 15 days with oclvanitygen. So 20 times faster with the graphics card.

[boumalo]

AAAHHHHH!!!!! Bitcoin address generation is best never outsourced! Why did 10 replies not mention this? It is utterly stupid to trust any service to generate save addresses for you as there is no way of knowing if he deleted his copy or not. Once he gets cancer or turns into an asshole, he digs out these addresses and spends your money.

yeah this much is pretty obvious...

i was curious though if there was some time of secured service providing this... i still probably would never trust it, however i was curious.

i will continue to hash away at my own vanity address on my own servers..

after having the basic logic explained (which i probably should have grokked from the start) i will just disperse vanitygen across a few dozen servers and see which one comes up the winner.

Each time you trust a website or any third party you are taking a risk, there is enough risks just by not protecting the private key enough to trust a third party to add more risks

[blackhathasher]

Do you have a decent graphics card? If so, did you use the version of vanitygen that exploits it? Doing so can make a big difference. On my machine, generating 1Brangdon gets to 50% after 511 days with vanitygen, 310 days with vanitygen64, and 15 days with oclvanitygen. So 20 times faster with the graphics card.

i used vanitygen64

i didnt know about oclvanitygen. i have a whole slew of GPU miners that it should work on. i will try it sometime as i retire my gpu's but they are still hashing strong from me so i hesitate to take one offline.

[Injust]

Do you have a decent graphics card? If so, did you use the version of vanitygen that exploits it? Doing so can make a big difference. On my machine, generating 1Brangdon gets to 50% after 511 days with vanitygen, 310 days with vanitygen64, and 15 days with oclvanitygen. So 20 times faster with the graphics card.

i used vanitygen64

i didnt know about oclvanitygen. i have a whole slew of GPU miners that it should work on. i will try it sometime as i retire my gpu's but they are still hashing strong from me so i hesitate to take one offline.

OMG you weren't using oclvanitygen? :O
Considering that you were just using vanitygen64, 25 days is fast