Generating addresses starting with certain characters such as "JoeAnonymousUserB7pMqyVa8JRcpZdCQLQ"

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Similar to how the SHA256 hash competition exists to validate a transaction, I wonder if this concept can be ported to addresses, so that the first few characters is significant to a human reader.

  • Is there value in making a public key address start with human readable text?

  • What approaches exist to accomplish this? Must the key pair be re-generated continuously or there there space to place a nonce?

  • Could this cause legal issues? ...such as a key that contains text matching censored information which is replicated to countries that ban that information

goodguys_activate

Posted 2012-09-19T05:41:16.000

Reputation: 11 898

Answers

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Yes, the concept is known, and called "vanity address". The problem with it is that it takes a lot of computing power. However, there is also a "split-key" method of generating vanity addresses, which lets you commission other people for the computing work. And finally, I created a website called Vanity Pool that handles a sort of free market of vanity miners and buyers.

As for the legal issues, I have already included a so called "illegal number" in the block chain as a part of my master thesis. So far Bitcoin hasn't been banned;).

ThePiachu

Posted 2012-09-19T05:41:16.000

Reputation: 41 594

1Yes, that part of the question was inspired from your master thesis. Great work, highly recommended reading!goodguys_activate 2012-09-19T12:19:08.153