** But you've sparked an idea ! What if we could submit worked keys to a live server that other workers are working too? Or remote cluster our machines together to generate a single kps output? You know make vanitypool a solve pool too.
Sounds doable, considering there are pools on the Internet for finding prime numbers. In this case the nodes would connect to the server and when someone requests for a prefix generated, the elliptic curve stuff is split among all the workers without sending the actual intermediate keys anywhere (maybe a hash of the key if it's really required). That should solve privacy issues.
Or we could go the peer-to-peer route where each VanitySearch instance is its own server, and a node would use a distributed tracking service to find nodes to connect to in order to pool the elliptic curve stuff. And here there is no central server which can be compromised.
Downside to both of these is that people are not going to pool for free, so there has to be some financial incentive to join a prefix pool like the kind of reward you have.