In the crypto landscape, addresses play a major role in storing and transferring digital assets over a blockchain network. Address, a building block of crypto, is a unique identifier of the crypto wallet shared publicly for making transactions. With time, these addresses become more advanced through personalization, adding alphanumeric character strings, making the address more personal and identifiable. All credit goes to the Vanity address.
What is a Vanity Address?
A vanity address or custom address is a new type of crypto address that conforms to specific parameters laid out by the creator. The personalized addresses are created respecting a series of parameters offered by the owner of said addresses.
Bitcoin, one of the oldest and strongest cryptocurrency support different types of addresses and Vanity address is one of them. Bitcoin vanity addresses are normal addresses, offering the same functionality as others. The only factor that makes a normal address and Bitcoin vanity address diverse is a custom alphanumeric character string. Bitcoin Vanity addresses consist of specific words or patterns in a part of a total of 26-35 characters.
Spotting light on the history, the first vanity address generator, the so-called “VanityGen” was introduced to the crypto space in 2012 over an open-source platform GitHub.
The normal addresses are randomly ordered alphanumeric characters without any order. Vanity addresses simply give a meaning or identity to the normal address by making them personalized either through brand, name, or any special word. The concept made it easy for the users to receive transactions safely along with reducing the probability to change or replace the address with another.
How Does Vanity Address Work in Bitcoin?
Manual and specialized vanity address generators are two methods to create BTC vanity addresses. Talking about the first approach, the method requires computing power, coding skills, and relevant software to find a Bitcoin address starting from a particular word combination.
Installing the vanity address-generating software and running the same is the initial phase of the manual process requires certain computing skills and requires more time to create the address. The use of specialized tools including application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips or graphic cards can make the work easy by reducing the time. In addition, the average search time for patterns varies depending on the selected pattern.
Another method is specialized vanity address generators which include third-party services for address generation. Users can access websites like Vanitygen.net to adopt the approach. The approach allows users to order a specific desired word to be searched with the computing power over the online tool. The user simply needs to enter a particular word and email address. Once generated, the private key is sent to the user’s email in exchange for the agreed price.
Conclusion
Vanity addresses made transactions-related practices easier and more efficient by making them safer. The address simply includes a series of alphanumeric character strings, making it more personal and identical. Manual and specialized vanity address generators are two approaches through which Bitcoin vanity addresses can be generated.
Steve Anderson is an Australian crypto enthusiast. He is a specialist in management and trading for over 5 years. Steve has worked as a crypto trader, he loves learning about decentralisation, understanding the true potential of the blockchain.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2023/09/03/vanity-address-adding-power-to-personalized-messages-in-bitcoin/