I had something on my mind like a little program which would ask for the user to introduce their public key and then the prefix of choice, once that is done, the program would withdraw computing power from the computer to start looking for the desired address.
That's the principle that the third party vanity creators, or vanity pools use. They get user's public key and then report back a number that was added to that pubkey.
The problem here would be storing the final result. The cold storage still has to be updated with the final private key or at least the difference (the number of times G was added to the pubkey) should be stored so that user doesn't have to perform the same long operation each time they want to access the funds.
Do you know where could I find the program used by vanity creators?
Perhaps, knowing the path which leads to the desired address, one could manipulate Electrum (which would store the public keys of a Trezor or Ledger, in order to show de address)
I thought this would be an advantage because if you are using a cold wallet, you could use vanity addresses without exposing the private keys.
Hey, that's not a bad idea.
Am I missing something here? It is trivially easy to use vanity addresses in a cold wallet without exposing the private keys using the more traditional methods of generating them.
Run your vanity generator on an airgapped computer, collect the private keys from all the addresses you want you use and import them in to an airgapped wallet such as Electrum. Then just take your addresses over to an online computer and create a watch only wallet with them.
I was thinking like, managing all your vanity with your main seed and without exposing it to the internet or an internet connected computer.
Something like: Go to your Ledger/Trezor, copy-paste your xpub to a program to get a vanity, you get a vanity address.
You want another?
You do the same again, and again all without managing several xpriv's, the only seed would keep stored withit the Trezor/Ledger the whole time.
The only problem I see would the the computing power and the fact the xpubs being exposed are still a problem, not as severe as seeds being exposed, though.
I had something on my mind like a little program which would ask for the user to introduce their public key and then the prefix of choice, once that is done, the program would withdraw computing power from the computer to start looking for the desired address.
I thought this would be an advantage because if you are using a cold wallet, you could use vanity addresses without exposing the private keys.
Also, people who have several inputs/outputs may share customized addresses for differente purposes, how several people do already, but without managing several private keys.
By introducing complex derivation paths and indexes, you risk losing your funds if you don't know the exact path and index.
Even with Hierarchical Deterministic wallets?
