Python-based brute-force search for a given vanity npub target.

python3 vanity_npub.py h0dl

Searches for an npub that starts with:

npub1 h0dl 023acd...

On success, it will print:

371,748 | 37.2s | npub1h0dl0dkjp884wz3wd30ucvfvdfvfdzp626hlvp68v0lfngnscdjsuy8yqm

        ****************************************************************************
        Private key: nsec1uu85rpk7sw2u2vrr6s9vlyvt4u58tcnluelm48a3fuytytvt4lnsa7pe0e
        ****************************************************************************

This reports the number of npubs it brute-force generated in order to find one with a matching prefix, the elapsed time in seconds, the successful npub, and its associated private key/nsec.

Search for "h0dl" at the beginning or the end of the npub:

python3 vanity_npub.py -e h0dl
> 1,026,042 | 103.0s | npub1y3ukxwznzysahdpnhrzgntal8kvmmd7uhx3k6klzzvaemm6nmwdse9h0dl

Search for "h0dl" or "sat0shi":

# Exits on whichever one it finds first
python3 vanity_npub.py h0dl,sat0shi

Spend a lot of time searching for "nakam0t0", but along the way note any "h0dler" or "h0rnet" bonus matches:

python3 vanity_npub.py nakam0t0 -b h0dler,h0rnet

usage: vanity_npub.py [-h] [-b BONUS_TARGETS] [-e] [-j NUM_JOBS] targets

********************** Nostr vanity pubkey generator **********************

Search for `target` in an npub such that:

        npub1[target]acd023...

positional arguments:
  targets               The string(s) you're looking for (comma-separated, no spaces)

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -b BONUS_TARGETS, --bonus_targets BONUS_TARGETS
                        Additional targets to search for, but does not end execution when found (comma-separated, no spaces)
  -e, --include-end     Also search the end of the npub
  -j NUM_JOBS, --jobs NUM_JOBS
                        Number of threads (default: 2)

npubs can only include characters from the bech32 list:

023456789acdefghjklmnpqrstuvwxyz

You'll get an error if you enter a vanity target that includes an unsupported character.

python vanity_npub.py bitcoin
> ERROR: "b" is not a valid character (not in the bech32 charset)
>         bech32 chars: 023456789acdefghjklmnpqrstuvwxyz

I can't do the probability math, but searching for a target string that's 6-chars long is exponentially harder than finding one that's 5-chars long. And then a target string that's 7-chars long is exponentially harder than 6. And so on.

At 8 or 9+ characters you're going to need a considerable amount of work to yield a match. Days? Weeks?

You may have found a 5-character npub in 200s but the exact same 5-character target could take you 10x longer on the next run. It's just like bitcoin mining; the probabilities are one thing but there are no guarantees about your luck in any given run.

Also note that you can stop a vanity npub search and restart it later. You're not wasting any work; it'll just keep searching new random npubs when you resume.

A 5-char vanity target could easily take tens of millions of tries. 6-char targets are in the hundreds of millions of tries. The script outputs an update at each million npubs tried so you can get a sense of your machine's guessing rate.

It's also to your advantage to add additional targets or bonus_targets. You're already doing the work to generate a random npub so you may as well check it for more than one possible match. Each extra term only adds minimal additional effort.

The biggest speed gain is to just open multiple terminal sessions and run an instance of vanity_npub.py in each one. Each instance will add more burden on the CPU but they don't seem to impact each others' performance much, as long as your CPU isn't completely slammed.

The built-in attempt to leverage multithreading using the -j command line option yielded only modest gains. Perhaps future improvements could make this more effective.

M1 Macbook Pro showed no benefit from multithreading (j=1 or j=2) at around 104s/mil tries. Slowed down beyond j=2.

# -j 1 or -j 2
1876.9s: Tried 18,000,000 npubs so far
1981.2s: Tried 19,000,000 npubs so far (105s / mil)
2085.5s: Tried 20,000,000 npubs so far (104s / mil)
2189.9s: Tried 21,000,000 npubs so far (104s / mil)

An older 8-core Ryzen 7 ran slightly faster at j=2 at around 160s/mil. Slowed down beyond j=2.

Quick version: No, you shouldn't blindly trust any private key generator you found online.

Long version: Assuming the pk calcs are trustworthy, it won't matter if two people search for the same vanity prefix. For example:

python3 vanity_npub.py hfsp
> 365,386 | 36.3s | npub1hfspw0hcddc9k058ap4frvsexlykqzw3k2cun9430hxdvg8z9evqp5wfc8
>
>         ****************************************************************************
>         Private key: nsec1d7smkrh9z8pn28lv6vm5ad736ms44wx84z405hsph6q7v3vqju0qqum9ak
>         ****************************************************************************

python3 vanity_npub.py hfsp
> 792,574 | 80.0s | npub1hfsp4ue6z0ykvjg99df6s2nvw7xzw9677wx70ydhdqegatf0qkcs4yqht7
>
>         ****************************************************************************
>         Private key: nsec1949kx7knea9tcug9906u0l787vkxuha0yymh0vuu9x8xqmqvalaqk6lutn
>         ****************************************************************************

The npub is 58-characters long (not including the "npub1" prefix). That is more than enough randomness to make it effectively impossible for any two people to yield the exact same complete npub when searching for the same vanity prefix.

Requires:

• python3.6+
• git

Clone this repo:

git clone https://github.com/kdmukai/nostr_vanity_npub.git
cd nostr_vanity_npub

Clone the python-nostr dependency:

git clone https://github.com/jeffthibault/python-nostr.git
pip install -e python-nostr