Glasnostr

Mine a vanity prefix for your Nostr npub

Installation

Download the latest binary for your OS & architecture from here. You should see binaries available for:

• linux/amd64 for modern Intel & AMD
• linux/arm64 for Raspberry Pi, etc
• darwin/amd64 for Intel macs
• darwin/arm64 for macs on Apple Silicon (M1, etc)
• If you are using Windows, I don't have time to explain it to you

Extract the file from the archive

$ tar -xvf {archive-filename}.tar.gz

Then, give it execution permissions

$ chmod +x glasnostr

and then move it somewhere into your PATH, such as /usr/local/bin (may require your admin password)

$ mv glasnostr /usr/local/bin

Usage

Glasnostr is simple. Just invoke it on the command line with your target prefix.

$ glasnostr foo

Or, if the executable is not in your $PATH, try this

$ ./glasnostr foo

You can also specify a limit to the number of attempts. The default is 21 million.

$ glasnostr foo 50000

Output

Success

$ glasnostr cherrymerkle69
Glasnostr (v0.0.2)
Mine a vanity prefix for your Nostr npub
https://github.com/eyelight/glasnostr

Starting 21000000 attempts for prefix 'cherrymerkle69'

Glasnostr found 'cherrymerkle69' after 420 tries:
    (pub)   adb1deba1bcca55h9775f65e2cb2f6a23b0d9bbe69b9d9fac36efe9ff871eae3
    (sec)   7443d822990o9f4d3ba65183f0251d75c92e31c3e8fedc109ad35e0f0699317e
    (npub)  npub14kcherrymerkle69qe0zevhk5gasmxa7dxuan7krdmlfl7r3at3su5qpl0  
    (nsec)  nsec1w3pasg5fp78563ax2xolqfgawhyjuvwrarldcyy66d0q7p5ex9lquw9d0c

Done hogging your CPU. Thanks for using Glasnostr.

Failure

$ glasnostr sn0wden
Glasnostr (v0.0.2)
Mine a vanity prefix for your Nostr npub
https://github.com/eyelight/glasnostr

Starting 21000000 attempts for prefix 'sn0wden'

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Privacy

As shown above (keys are fake), successful output will display private keys on the screen in plaintext, so you might want to redirect the output into a file using > (note that this will overwrite newfile.txt).

$ glasnostr foo 50000 > newfile.txt

You can append to an existing file by redirecting with >> (append) instead of > (overwrite).

$ glasnostr foo >> exsistingfile.txt

Building from Source

You can build from source assuming you have a Go environment set up.

Navigate to your Golang src directory, which is usually ~/go/src

$ cd ~/go/src

Clone the repo & navigate into it

$ git clone https://github.com/eyelight/glasnostr
$ cd glasnostr

and then build it

$ go build -o glasnostr main.go

now you can either invoke it with ./glasnostr from the repo directory, or, put it in your PATH, as above

Build and install with make

If you have make, you can use the Makefile included in the repo, using either local or local-install

You can build glasnostr inside a build directory within the repo

$ make local

Or, you can install it to /usr/local/bin/glasnostr (symlinked from ./build). The following will ask you for a sudo password because writing to /usr/local/bin usually requires elevated privileges. Check the Makefile before executing to ensure there is no funny business.

$ make local-install

Miscellaneous

The character set for a valid npub is 023456789acdefghjklmnpqrstuvwxyz so only mine prefixes with these characters. (Yes, 'foo' has been illegal this whole time).

If you do find 'cherrymerkle69' please let me know on Twitter (@eyelightyou) or on Nostr npub1c0chardxwju98phrz3d7z9nkvahjcgssvwn8s9wmp9x093492yqqltdmce ⚡ tips much appreciated!