For those who have used Bitcoin, you might have noticed that Bitcoin addresses can be quite unwieldy – they’re difficult to remember and aesthetically unpleasing. This article introduces a method to create personalized Bitcoin addresses. If you’re unfamiliar with how Bitcoin addresses are generated, just remember this sequence: generate a random number » calculate a public key using elliptic curve cryptography » process through various hash functions » encode it into a more visually appealing form using Base58. Simply put, a randomly generated private key corresponds to one unique address, which cannot be reverse-engineered.

Customized Address Generation

To create special addresses, you can use the script from samr7/vanitygen1. This tool supports not only CPU but also GPU computations. You can specify the desired prefix for the address, but be mindful that the more characters you specify, the longer it will take due to exponential growth in computation time, as detailed in 2. For example, generating an address starting with “1Bitcoin” could take about a week.

Additionally, it’s worth mentioning the advanced version exploitagency/vanitygen-plus3, which is based on samr7/vanitygen. This enhanced tool supports a wide range of cryptocurrencies, including notable ones like Blackcoin, Bitcoin Testnet, Dash, DeepOnion, Dogecoin, Litecoin, Monacoin, Namecoin, and Peercoin.

Security Consideration

A crucial aspect to note is that the security of these generated addresses heavily relies on the randomness of the number generator used. It’s essential to verify the reliability of the random number generator in these tools, as it directly impacts the security of your generated address.

References

  1. Samr7’s Vanitygen on GitHub ↩

  2. Bitcoin Wiki - Vanitygen ↩

  3. Vanitygen Plus on GitHub ↩