Hi! I am looking into this challenge and wondering.. Could be the address of some puzzles was generated from an uncompressed public key? from what I know you can't tell if the address is compressed or uncompressed by just looking at it.. or am overthinking it? :/
Overthinking it. If you read back through the history of this challenge, the creator stated they were compressed. And all keys found thus far have been found using compressed format.
well I hope so, but I don't remember that I have encountered a statement from the creator of this puzzle that explicitly says the addresses are compressed. I started to question it indeed when I see this challenge laying around for years with no progress.. a lot of questions arises.. maybe a lot of people are doubting it.. anyway, I will spend some time here...
My recollection was it was a temp account and he basically stated the format was intended to be sort of a benchmark of what is possible to brute force.