Split-key vanity address

A split-key vanity address is a type of vanity address generated from one or more ECDSA private keys. The general use case is when a user generates a key-pair and only shares his public key. Everybody can use this public key to find the complementary public key leading to a vanity address. The user can than merge his private key with the complementary private key, leading to the private key of the vanity address. The security of such solution is guaranteed by the properties of the Elliptic Curve Cryptography [1].

Address generation

A split-key vanity address is generated by a specialized software, called a generator. One such sample generator is available as a part of the Vanitygen program suite. Bitaddress can be used for this purpose as well as explained in this video

Address merging

In order to create a usable vanity address, one needs to merge two or more private keys. This can be done with specialized software, such as the GoBit Testing Suite[2]. Another option is using the Vanity Wallet tool of Bitaddress, but bitaddress only supports legacy addresses, whereas the keymerging tool of Bitcoin-Uni supports P2SH & Bech32 native Segwit as well. An offline keymerging tool called VanityAddressMerger is available from Github VanityAddressMerger, this tool supports all mainnet address types. It is recommended to use these tools offline in an incognito browser, while merging partial keys, to get the final private key secure.

Address generation outsourcing

Generating a split-key vanity address can be outsourced to a third party miner without risking your final private key being compromised. Moreover, work on such address generation can be distributed to many miners simultaneously through a use of a pooling service. One example of such a service is Vanity Pool[3].

Other options for outsourcing vanity address generation include Bitcoin-Uni, Coin Dance Vanity and Vante. These services generate keys on an on-demand basis.

Address generation fees

For outsourcing the finding of vanity addresses, users got to pay fees for the Hardware and ernergy consumtion. The pricing of the services are verry different. Some of them do not update the Bitcoin prices.

See also

• Bitcoin-Uni - Cheapest Split-key only service, supporting all mainnet address types: legacy; segwit; native segwit Bech32
• Vanity Pool - the first split-key vanity address mining pool
• Coin Dance Vanity - On demand split-key vanity address generation service.
• Vante - On demand split-key vanity address generation service.
• Vanitygen - a software suite offering an Open-CL split-key vanity address generator
• Reddit post - Discussion on split-key address generation

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