Just noticed this today. I got 2 extremely similar private keys. Does anyone know if this could be a sign of a security issue with the PRNG?
Probably not
Yes! This should not happen. Unless you altered the source to search from a specific starting point.
I've never used VanitySearch (because I hardly trust any new software), and I don't know how it works internally, but I would expect it to generate a new random private key after finding a match. I think it's okay to add "+1" from a random number to search the next one (which I expect to be much faster than generating new private keys all the time), but two similar private keys shouldn't happen.
I'm just using the official build, unaltered. (OS: Windows 10 with the latest security updates)
Just found another 2 similar private keys:
0x90AD2D51198584C695F79D27512B147C865C7093E10065F4B4363881C882C87D
0x90AD2D51198584C695F79D27512B147C865C7093E10065F2B4363881C87CF970
PubAddress: bc1q22ace8n7qwe3xtazp05x6vl8fy7mkf5cwznnp5
Priv (WIF): p2wpkh:L24wedqSrZsKNmmF33fxZj75Xz4P4K562VzHKJCE4Q2p6TrBoJha
Priv (HEX): 0x90AD2D51198584C695F79D27512B147C865C7093E10065F2B4363881C87CF970
PubAddress: bc1q22acevaq6x6r4867ay2n73qfgjlcj95pzrxx9x
Priv (WIF): p2wpkh:L24wedqSrZsKNmmF33fxZj75Xz4P4K562WivkuVB3vnYXXDimUkL
Priv (HEX): 0x90AD2D51198584C695F79D27512B147C865C7093E10065F4B4363881C882C87D
At this point I'm guessing this is due to performance optimizations made by the developer?