I wanted to ask if someone got the public key for #66 as i have tried to bruteforce it but my hardware is not capable of doing so, if someone can link any code or algorithm (or even the public key if you have it).

can you explain me how does kangaroo works, for example if i have a public key for a bitcoin address can i use kangaroo to brute-force it's private key?

i have one more doubt, let's say i have a public key (not for the puzzle), what input should i give in the start and end range?

Hi.
Three years ago i first heard about the puzzle. At first i was interested in reading about this, then i started solving it. I was looking for software, formulas, theories, like all the other solvers, i developed a lot of my own software. I bought and rented gpus, cpus, servers, but did not give up, because solving the puzzle would help me solve some financial difficulties. I didn't notice how the first year passed.
The idea of opening the puzzle took hold of me and it turned into an addiction. I'm not a gambler, never liked it, but puzzles turned out to be a much more severe addiction, because i always had the feeling that everything depended on my knowledge and perseverance, and not on luck. But i was wrong.
I tried to stop many times, talked about it with a psychologist, came up with various forms of prohibition, but this only fueled in me a greater desire to solve at least one puzzle.
At work, i became inattentive, i was demoted, then fired altogether, because i did not perceive new information well and no longer met the required level. I got into debt because i couldn’t get a good job again, i started taking medications that the doctor prescribed for me, but it didn’t help. Six months ago i developed insomnia, became nervous, and almost stopped communicating with my wife, although i wanted to. Three months ago she couldn’t stand it and left me. I sold almost everything to pay off some of my debts and survive. In 2 weeks, i am going of my own free will for three months to a clinic for people with mental disorders. This is the only thing that will help me avoid going to court for failure to pay bank debts and gives me hope that under the supervision of doctors and in complete isolation i will be able to get rid of this addiction.

I don’t know how many people created the puzzle, who you are, what goals you actually pursue, but one thing i can tell you is that even the most insignificant idea at first glance always has consequences. When creating such toys as a puzzle, you did't think about others. The reward that is stored in every wallet is a bait that can become poison for someone.
I want to blame you, but i can't, because i'm not an evil person. Perhaps i will feel better that i have told you all this.
Maybe you think something like "just do your job and don't look at puzzle" - please, stop, you just know nothing about the disease of addiction.

If you can, please help me close at least some of my debts. My wallet is bc1q7pp4h4wc8p8czajfkwc7sc049d9vyrc8ftnct2

If you don't, i'll understand.
This message is for everyone - know your limits before.

I won't respond to messages in the thread because i'm embarrassed, sorry.

Oh, i feel naked in the middle of the street...

At first it was really just an observation of brute force, because i did not fully understand the strategy of “attacking” with random numbers. Then I started modifying the existing software. Finally, i came up with my own software.
I am an engineer, not a programmer or mathematician, i had to study, so most of the time i rather struggled with technologies that were new to me.
Addiction began to appear when i felt that i was influencing the process. More like an obsession.
I will have access to the code on monday. In fact, i didn’t come up with anything totally new, i just came to this conclusion:
I ran hundreds of tests and simulations and found that if a number is divided into "chunks", the probability of hitting the target increases many times. For example:

1 0000 0000 00000000

What we see: the first digit is the starting number of the hex key. If we take, for example, the 66th key, then this number can be 2 or 3. A little later i will explain what i did in this case.
The second and third groups have a range from 0000 to ffff, so, 65536 options.
I generate two random numbers, convert them to hex, concatenate them and pass them to a modified rotor-cuda so that it can iterate through the remaining 8 values. The resulting range for example:

1fb1206ac0000ffff
1fb1206acffff0000

I never iterate over the full value of 00000000-ffffffff because the likelihood of there being 4 zeros or 4 "f" at the beginning is extremely small.

If in the first chunk we generate a number within 65536**2 (1 00000000 00000000), and not two separate values 0-65535, then the simulation shows that getting into a number within 4 billion is much more difficult than hitting two numbers 0-65535 twice. Mathematics often says the opposite, but i only believe the simulation, which showed me that in this case it is much more likely.

Having a cluster of servers and an orchestrator that gave each GPU a group of new random numbers, it took me 2-4 seconds to brute force the tail of each key. Up to 40 GPUs worked simultaneously (as much as there was enough money for rent).
If the number starts with 2-3, i went through the values twice, changing the starting digit.
The second and third chunks are saved into a regular text document as one value, so the generator never hits the numbers twice and wastes no time. The maximum size of this document would be only 39 gigabytes.
I understand that going through all 4 billion options would take many lives, but my system seemed to me the only one possible in terms of probability and i still believe that it would have worked, but i no longer have the money for further experiments.

I've attached my text document with all the ~1.4 millions of chunks that i checked on the 66th key. I checked both - with 2 and 3 at the beginning. The tail, of course, was checked by brute force.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EeEMjnQ_6xa9S_88zPSr8OELCNkwXL3o/view?usp=sharing

Hope it helps someone.
It will be very funny if my code didn't work well. But i checked it on the founded wallets, i don't know what could have broken it.

I thought so too until i started running simulations. I'll explain later.

Exactly the same waste of computing power, i don't understand how you came to that conclusion.

I know. The way we see it, numbers look visually simpler than hexadecimal. I didn't say that the results are different.

I don't need to prove to anyone what i see, but if it helps someone, the logic is simple:

Imagine a slot machine. It has 1 slot with 65536**2 options. One generation = one rotation.
The pseudocode is simple:


Now try the same thing, but with two slots of 65536. I already said earlier that, despite the identical number of options, paradoxically, the frequency of two numbers appearing in a row of short numbers is in most cases much higher than only one, but long number.
This works up to the third or fourth "slot". The more there are, the less chance there is. Thus, generating all 8 characters results in almost zero chance of "catching" the desired value if you not exclude a second hit.
There is no need to guess one value out of extra large. You can significantly narrow the search if you combine ranges and brute force. That's all what i'm talking about.
In the case of the 66th key, the range is reduced from 2*4294967296*4294967296 to 4294967296.

The ranges that are in the text document above cost me over $60k. If someone tells me that this helped him narrow down his search and he found the key, of course i won't be happy for him, but maybe it's comforting to know that i screwed up so that someone else wouldn't (no).

There is nothing more to talk here, it's over. Just take my ranges.

A true random source of 65536**2 range values can (and will) spit out a (42, 42, ...) sequence out just as equally likely as (0x7b03aa9f, 0x33bcf51c, ...). If your argument is that it's less likely for same sub-ranges to be part of a combined range, that is correct, but the sum of probabilities for all these cases is in the below 0.00000...01% of the entire count of possibilities - as demonstrated by your huge generated files. So, a lot of convoluted work to exclude a (relatively few) close to zero edge-cases.

I don't see any violation of the forum rules in saying what i think. It's very strange to ask someone not to say something you don't want to discuss. Just don't discuss it.

But any word about 125th which moved to the same address as 120th in short time. Super lucky or very tricky one who didn't spend anything and doing it for fun? Bullshit.

There is no reason and provement here to protect idea about incremental puzzle with free cheese to prove safety or else.

Just want to address my message to the authors - if you need significant progress in any idea, you no need to create a "mystic" around. Just stay touch with crowd, explain what the hell you need and set the task. Everyone knows that the only way to guess something is random or brute force. No bugs, no exploits, nothing. Otherwise private keys would have been opened long ago by people who really know about hacking.
There is a lot of people here who waste a lot of time to create software hoping to get something in return, but not to prove something to someone.
If the author of "puzzle" awarded only those who developed the software, that would be fair. But now anyone who uses someone else's software can guessed the key and get "reward". What a crap?
Maybe the author doesn't treat cryptocurrency as money? So, it's definitely money and it's can be dangerous to play, because you play with people. Take the responsibility for what happens behind.

Maybe it's all looks like i want to blame someone in my sickness, but i just want to say - perhaps the author is simply laughing at everyone for some reason, or there is a much greater deception behind.

And who mention anything about the rules?

All that I am just saying is stop spreading that bullshit.

How many times in the past some users comment "What if puzzle 64 is not in the expected range". Now we known that they just made a fool of themselves (Just saying out loud)


Exactly

i wonder is it more probable to find a key through random approach or with consecutive trials ?