Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Bitcoin puzzle transaction ~32 BTC prize to who solves it
by
arulbero
on 18/11/2018, 10:49:13 UTC
This is correct only for BSGS (Baby-Step-Giant-Step).

Using Pollard Rho method, the expected work is 3*2^80 group operations with almost zero memory requirements.

Note that unlike BSGS  this method is probabilistic, and might fail with very low probability (on the order of 2^-160).

One can improve the algorithm using Distinguished Points, bringing the expected work down to 1.253*2^80 group operations, using both less memory and less group operations (on average) than BSGS.


Pollard Rho can't exploit the fact that the private key is in the range from 1 to 2^160 for example, because it is probabilistic. It would need always 2^128 steps. Only BSGS is suitable for this task.

If you try to retrieve #57 with Pollard Rho, you won't retrieve the private key in a few seconds or in a few years.

With "space search is 2^160" in this context we mean a 2^160 points subset in the space of the 2^256 points of the secp256k1 curve.