Vanity Address

A vanity address is one whose characters were searched for until they spelled something recognisable, usually a word or a name at the beginning or the end. It is produced by generating enormous numbers of key pairs and keeping one whose resulting address matches the pattern; the key that results is ordinary and no weaker for it, and the search effort rises sharply with each additional character demanded. Two safety points follow, and both cut against the reason people want one. A readable address is not a more trustworthy address — nothing about the pattern is registered, reserved or verified by anyone. And a memorable prefix makes address poisoning easier rather than harder, because an imitator only has to reproduce the part a human actually reads. If a third party generated the address for you, the private key was in their hands at the moment of creation, and no later assurance changes that.