Quote from: zahid888 on September 16, 2025, 09:43:34 AM

I want to clear up something important for everyone in this Puzzle journey.

The truth is: prefixes (whether in Base58 addresses or HASH160) have no relation to the actual private key. Through many experiments step by step till now, I can confirm that once we pass through the irreversible transformation of elliptic curve multiplication, any hope of tracing back from a prefix to the real private key is gone. Cry

Thinking that a certain prefix gives us a “hint” about the actual key is just wishful thinking.

The only practical use of prefixes is to measure and track our scanning progress. For example:

Base58 (addresses):

Each character = 1 in 58 chance.
Probability of matching n chars = 1 / 58ⁿ.

In 2³² ≈ 4.29B scans you expect:

1 char ≈ 74M matches
2 chars ≈ 1M matches
3 chars ≈ 22K matches
4 chars ≈ 376 matches
5 chars ≈ 7 matches
6 chars ≈ 1 matches

HASH160 (hex):

Each hex digit = 1 in 16 chance.
Probability of matching n digits = 1 / 16ⁿ.

In 2³² ≈ 4.29B scans you expect:

1 char ≈ 268M matches
2 chars ≈ 17M matches
3 chars ≈ 1M matches
4 chars ≈ 67k matches
5 chars ≈ 4k matches
6 chars ≈ 268 matches
7 chars ≈ 16 matches
8 chars ≈ 1 matches

(On my one RTX 3060 Ti, this 2³² scan finishes in ~2 seconds, and I typically get 1 or 2 addresses with an 8-chars initial HASH160 hex match - sometimes none at all.)

This shows clearly: prefix matching is only a statistical milestone, or a POW, not a clue toward the target private key.

Regarding fixed bits - my own “fixed bits” formula based on prefix matching is still random - it doesn’t inject any new logic or shortcut.

So in the end, prefix-based searching is just for fun, to keep ourselves engaged while facing the massive challenge of scanning through a 2^71 keyspace.

This puzzle is all about grinding through the natural variance of randomness until we get lucky. That’s the true nature of brute force. Angry

Hey, could you please share your "prefix" app? Or any open source ones which as you said were better? I don't seem to find any.