Vanity Pool - vanity address generator pool

[BurtW]

One easy way, download vanitygen and then try it.  For example:

Code:

C:\downloads\www.bitcoin.org>vanitygen 1WayTooLong
Difficulty: 10054102514374869638
[103.26 Kkey/s][total 630528][Prob 0.0%][50% in 2.140163e+006y]

And:

Code:

C:\downloads\www.bitcoin.org>vanitygen 1short
Difficulty: 15318045009
[103.59 Kkey/s][total 462080][Prob 0.0%][50% in 1.2d]

[ThePiachu]

I'm very interested and will probably be sending some coin to the project in the future.

I have a question though, in this thread you talk about the cost to generate a vanity to a certain amount of characters. Is there a place to check something like that? Like how long/how much hashing power to generate a vanity 3 character vs. 8 characters? Or is it more complex than that?

Assume you can generate addresses at 20MKeys/s, then for each character after the initial "1" you need to check about 58^n characters. After 7 it starts to get pricey very fast. 13 and it would be cheaper to mine every Bitcoin ever at the current difficulty than to create the address.

There is some more info on this in my master thesis
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=88149.0
Chapter 5.6 for example.

[schnell]

What's stopping you from moving to the real chain? There might not be a favourable program for split key generation, but you can still launch nonetheless?

[ThePiachu]

What's stopping you from moving to the real chain? There might not be a favourable program for split key generation, but you can still launch nonetheless?

I suppose I could. I was holding off from doing that as I first of all wanted to test the system a bit more, make sure it's not buggy and most importantly - handles money properly and responsibly. I guess I'll look into it this week - spruce the code up a bit and look into launching some beta version of the website.

[schnell]

What's stopping you from moving to the real chain? There might not be a favourable program for split key generation, but you can still launch nonetheless?

I suppose I could. I was holding off from doing that as I first of all wanted to test the system a bit more, make sure it's not buggy and most importantly - handles money properly and responsibly. I guess I'll look into it this week - spruce the code up a bit and look into launching some beta version of the website.

Fair point. Well I wish you good luck, and I'm looking forward to using this site for the real chain.

[ThePiachu]

Okay, so by popular demand - the live beta version of the Vanity Pool is up on:

https://vanitypool.appspot.com

The testnet version has also been updated. The changes include:
-slightly improved webpages
-removal of ads
-email notification when the work is created and solved
-updates to the FAQ

Keep in mind, that the website is still in beta - coin and data loss may occur.

Happy mining, the first reward is up to keep miners busy for awhile.

[nimda]

Am I correct that there is no cpu miner for addresses? (eg vanityminer)
Also, I wonder if someone can figure out at what reward size it becomes more profitable to mine for addresses.

[ThePiachu]

Am I correct that there is no cpu miner for addresses? (eg vanityminer)

There is a bounty for it here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=90587.0
Some people have already developed working solutions for address mining. I suppose the development will pick up once there are some actual Bitcoins to claim.

Also, I wonder if someone can figure out at what reward size it becomes more profitable to mine for addresses.

I did those calculations in my master thesis:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=88149.0
On page 69 you can see that the profitability varies with the GPU. I only had 3 graphics cards to test, but it seems that less powerful ones might be more effective at generating coins. I suppose if the service becomes really popular people will start analysing the performance of various GPUs, similar to the mining hardware comparison wiki page.

[ThePiachu]

Well, I see someone has succeeded at solving a first real work on the Pool. Congratulations to the miner, and a big thank you to the proud new owner of address starting with 1winter for using the pool .

[samr7]

The vanitygen suite now includes a program called oclvanityminer that is designed to work with this pool.  Please try it out!

Code:

$ ./oclvanityminer -u https://vanitypool.appspot.com/ -a 1samr7UZxtC6MEAFHqr1h3Kq453xJJbe4
Searching for pattern: "1satoshi" Reward: 0.100000 Value: 0.000007 BTC/MkeyHr
Difficulty: 51529903411245
Searching for pattern: "1Satoshi" Reward: 0.100000 Value: 0.000007 BTC/MkeyHr
Next match difficulty: 25764951705622 (2 prefixes)
[6.14 Mkey/s][total 62914560][Prob 0.0%][50% in 33.6d]

I'm happy to throw what meager compute power I have at this.  However, the bounties for the above example would have to be about 10X what they are to be as lucrative as bitcoin mining at the current difficulty.

[samr7]

One feature you may wish to consider adding to vanity pool, the ability to specify case-insensitivity in bounties.

Whoever posted the bounties for 1Satoshi and 1satoshi paid for two different addresses differing only in the case of the first letter.  It's entirely possible that that person simply wants that name on firstbits, and would rather pay for one case-insensitive address.  Also, at the reward offered for those bounties, finding a case-insensitive match would be very close to profitable, but finding either of the case-sensitive variants is not.

Or maybe not in this case, looks like 1satoshi is taken on firstbits.

[runlinux]

Next step here is to setup something where it checks the vanity pool for work. If based on some criteria, its more lucrative to mine a vanity address than to mine at a typical pool, it mines at the vanity pool over the typical pool.

I wonder how that'd be to do...

[ThePiachu]

The vanitygen suite now includes a program called oclvanityminer that is designed to work with this pool.  Please try it out!

I`m looking forward to trying out how it works, thanks! Does it have all the features listed in the requirements, so I can send you the bounty afterwards?

One feature you may wish to consider adding to vanity pool, the ability to specify case-insensitivity in bounties.

Whoever posted the bounties for 1Satoshi and 1satoshi paid for two different addresses differing only in the case of the first letter.  It's entirely possible that that person simply wants that name on firstbits, and would rather pay for one case-insensitive address.  Also, at the reward offered for those bounties, finding a case-insensitive match would be very close to profitable, but finding either of the case-sensitive variants is not.

Actually, I did talk to the person and they wanted just the capitalised version. They didn`t know that the pool is case-sensitive, so I payed for the other version and added a note on the work submission about the issue.

Later I will want to include regular expressions into the pool, but those might be a bit harder to check for validity at the initial stage.

Next step here is to setup something where it checks the vanity pool for work. If based on some criteria, its more lucrative to mine a vanity address than to mine at a typical pool, it mines at the vanity pool over the typical pool.

I wonder how that'd be to do...

I did some comparison like that and put it in my master thesis here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=88149.0

It all varies based on your GPU's rate of generating hashes and keys, as well as the difficulty, rewards, etc.

[samr7]

I`m looking forward to trying out how it works, thanks! Does it have all the features listed in the requirements, so I can send you the bounty afterwards?

Yes, please!  It should meet all the requirements.  One minor exception though, it looks like you specifically want 64-bit Windows binaries, but I only build the OpenCL pieces for 32-bit Windows.  This can be changed.

Actually, I did talk to the person and they wanted just the capitalised version. They didn`t know that the pool is case-sensitive, so I payed for the other version and added a note on the work submission about the issue.

Later I will want to include regular expressions into the pool, but those might be a bit harder to check for validity at the initial stage.

Indeed, determining a "difficulty" for a PCRE style regular expression is quite the can of worms.

It should be possible to design a subset of PCRE that can be converted directly into a bunch of prefixes, instead of having to execute the regular expression on each potentially matching address.  The idea would be to force the RE to start with a ^, disallow *, limit the length, and limit the resulting number of prefixes.  This would be a lot more expressive than a case-sensitive or case-insensitive prefix, and just as fast to search.  It would also solve the problem of executing REs on the GPU, as long as the RE isn't so complicated that it creates a search table that is too large to fit on the GPU.

[ThePiachu]

I`m looking forward to trying out how it works, thanks! Does it have all the features listed in the requirements, so I can send you the bounty afterwards?

Yes, please!  It should meet all the requirements.  One minor exception though, it looks like you specifically want 64-bit Windows binaries, but I only build the OpenCL pieces for 32-bit Windows.  This can be changed.

Well, I guess everything is in order. It would be nice if you compiled it for the 64-bit Windows, but I don`t know whether it would increase the performance or not. Although The miner appears to work pecularly at times. Currently there are three works available, 1DanieLRH::0:0.100000; 1Satoshi::0:0.100000; 1ThePiachu::0:1.000000;, and instead of working on 1Satoshi, 7 letters, it chooses 1DanieLRH, 8 letters for the same reward. Does it just work on the first available work, or does it prioritise its work/reward ratio?

Also a nice feature would be allowing one to specify a TestNet address for the vanitypooltest website, but that`s not really much of an issue.

So, unless someone else has some objections, I`ll send you the Bitcoins soon. What address would you like to receive them with? 1samr7UZxtC6MEAFHqr1h3Kq453xJJbe4 ?

[samr7]

Well, I guess everything is in order. It would be nice if you compiled it for the 64-bit Windows, but I don`t know whether it would increase the performance or not. Although The miner appears to work pecularly at times. Currently there are three works available, 1DanieLRH::0:0.100000; 1Satoshi::0:0.100000; 1ThePiachu::0:1.000000;, and instead of working on 1Satoshi, 7 letters, it chooses 1DanieLRH, 8 letters for the same reward. Does it just work on the first available work, or does it prioritise its work/reward ratio?

It does rank bounties by reward/difficulty.  Choosing the 8 letter prefix is the best choice here, but not by much:

Code:

$ ./vanitygen 1Satoshi
Difficulty: 51529903411245
...
$ ./vanitygen 1DanieLRH
Difficulty: 50656515217834

It will also group together bounties by public key.  When the 1Satoshi and 1satoshi bounties were both present, because they had the same public key, they would go into the same pattern set and would be searched for simultaneously.  Also, when dealing with bounties with the same public key, the aggregate reward/difficulty is used for decision making.  This would cause it to choose those two bounties together over the 1DaneiLRH bounty, if it were present.

Anyway, expect a new release in the next day or so that has an oclvanityminer64.exe.

Also a nice feature would be allowing one to specify a TestNet address for the vanitypooltest website, but that`s not really much of an issue.

You mean for the -a parameter?  It should accept a testnet address there.  Did it not accept one for you?  It is supposed to validate that what you enter for the -a parameter is a valid address of some sort, but it won't enforce a specific address type.

So, unless someone else has some objections, I`ll send you the Bitcoins soon. What address would you like to receive them with? 1samr7UZxtC6MEAFHqr1h3Kq453xJJbe4 ?

That's the right address.

[samr7]

Ideas looking forward

It's possible to make vanity address mining much like regular bitcoin mining, in the sense of tracking the total work completed by each participant, and possibly distributing rewards to all participants rather than just the finder.  The idea would be, if somebody wants 1DanieLRH, post the bounty for 1Danie, and keep track of how many addresses each miner returns.  Eventually, a matching address will come back, and all of the partial matches will make it possible to determine the division of compute resources.

It also wouldn't hurt if the pool posted the portion of the bounty that will go to whoever solves it, rather than the amount paid by the customer.  It's a letdown to see a bounty for 0.1 BTC, and only receive 0.08 on completion.

[ThePiachu]

It will also group together bounties by public key.  When the 1Satoshi and 1satoshi bounties were both present, because they had the same public key, they would go into the same pattern set and would be searched for simultaneously.  Also, when dealing with bounties with the same public key, the aggregate reward/difficulty is used for decision making.  This would cause it to choose those two bounties together over the 1DaneiLRH bounty, if it were present.

Hmm, a pretty neat and smart thing to do with the aggregation of the public keys.

You mean for the -a parameter?  It should accept a testnet address there.  Did it not accept one for you?  It is supposed to validate that what you enter for the -a parameter is a valid address of some sort, but it won't enforce a specific address type.

I suppose it didn't work last time I checked, but then again it might be just some hiccup on my computer.

So, unless someone else has some objections, I`ll send you the Bitcoins soon. What address would you like to receive them with? 1samr7UZxtC6MEAFHqr1h3Kq453xJJbe4 ?

That's the right address.

So, I`ve sent the bounty in this transaction:

http://blockexplorer.com/tx/40800a9f0c708295c03338d559ca6011efc2828ea9ab44f2aae8e4f46bcd317e#o1

The total comes up to 12 Bitcoins, as there was a 2 Bitcoin donation to the bounty early on (http://blockexplorer.com/address/1Cuw26gA2nhuqjBELwL6QGG89RsqfaV3v8).

Ideas looking forward

It's possible to make vanity address mining much like regular bitcoin mining, in the sense of tracking the total work completed by each participant, and possibly distributing rewards to all participants rather than just the finder.  The idea would be, if somebody wants 1DanieLRH, post the bounty for 1Danie, and keep track of how many addresses each miner returns.  Eventually, a matching address will come back, and all of the partial matches will make it possible to determine the division of compute resources.

It also wouldn't hurt if the pool posted the portion of the bounty that will go to whoever solves it, rather than the amount paid by the customer.  It's a letdown to see a bounty for 0.1 BTC, and only receive 0.08 on completion.

I suppose the partial rewards would be possible, but could tax the pool a bit too much. It is running on Google App Engine which charges for each read/write operation. I guess if there is enough demand I can look into that.

And with the reward, yes, I suppose it would be more "human friendly" to display the actual reward that will be given to people. Sometimes being a programmer one forgets about the human aspect of things .

[phantastisch]

Overall i guess the rewards are too low, i mean electricity costs are higher than  0.1 BTC for estimated 20 Days with 20Mhash, so there is no point in mining them at the moment.
If someone wants some nice firstbits without much hassle , i think he has to pay a bit more than a dollar ;-)

[ThePiachu]

Overall i guess the rewards are too low, i mean electricity costs are higher than  0.1 BTC for estimated 20 Days with 20Mhash, so there is no point in mining them at the moment.
If someone wants some nice firstbits without much hassle , i think he has to pay a bit more than a dollar ;-)

Well, yeah, that`s what one gets for setting a low threshold for minimum fees. Oh well, maybe Bitcoin`s price will get higher and those 0.1BTCs will be worth something then...