Thanks again, yep I did see the generated public key on your site - I just imported the private key to my wallet for safe keeping. I have now successfully requested a vanity address & had confirmation, I offered 0.5 BTC for 6 letters after the 1, if this turns out to not be sufficient or if I just wish to add more then can I send the extra to the same bounty address & it will be automatically added & updated?
Yes, the balance should be updated if you decide to increase your bounty. The system checks for changes every few minutes.
I also now understand the 2 methods of retrieving the vanity address & I would like to contribute 1 BTC when you set up a bounty for an offline tool to be used for split-key vanity address operations, please to send me an address when you set the bounty up & I expect others may wish to contribute also as it then guarantees that the whole process from start to finish is secure.
Thank you, I will contact you with the details of the bounty once I set it up.
Edit: Also when requesting other VAs can one use the same public key or is it best to use a different one each time? As my first one is a gift I shall use a different PUB next time anyway but if there are a few just for me then is that OK to re-use?
It is not only okay to re-use them, it is even encouraged to use the same key if you are generating multiple addresses in a batch. Generally, the vanity miners group addresses having the same public key to mine them together. On average this would mean that the time to solve any number of addresses should be roughly the time to solve the longest pattern. I also heard that the main vanity miner solution prioritises the mining based on the total bounty for a given public key, so that's another advantage for mining many addresses together.
You shouldn't, however, mine the same pattern with the same public key, as one could submit the same solution for both and claim both of the bounties with the same solution - not an ideal outcome. You can, however, extend the pattern with some additional character to vary them around.
