BitBOINC searches for the private keys of well-known, long-unclaimed "Bitcoin puzzle" addresses, using spare CPU/GPU time donated by volunteers around the world. This is not mining: no new coins are created. Read the full explanation.

bitboinc is a volunteer computing project that searches for the private keys of well-known, long-unclaimed Bitcoin "puzzle" addresses, using donated CPU and GPU time from volunteers all over the world.

Back in 2015, someone created a series of Bitcoin addresses, each funded with an amount of BTC, and each with its private key deliberately restricted to a known, sequentially-numbered range: puzzle #1's key is somewhere in a 1-bit range, puzzle #2's in a 2-bit range, and so on up to puzzle #160's 160-bit range. It was set up as a public challenge: whoever finds the key for an address can claim the coins in it, using nothing but publicly available information. Most of the small, early puzzles were solved years ago. Many of the larger ones are still unclaimed today, some holding real value, and that's what bitboinc is for.

This is not Bitcoin mining. Mining creates new coins by competing to extend the blockchain, and it never stops. bitboinc does nothing of the sort: it searches a fixed, famous set of addresses whose creator deliberately left them as an open challenge years ago, for anyone who finds the matching key to claim. No new coins are created, no blocks are mined, and the work has nothing to do with Bitcoin's network or its security.

Is this legitimate? Why should I trust it?

This is a fair question to ask before you donate real compute time and electricity to any project, and we'd rather answer it directly than leave you to wonder.

First: nothing about running bitboinc puts YOUR computer, YOUR files, or YOUR own wallets at any risk. The app only ever reads the small work packet the server sends it (a key range and a target address) and writes back a result file saying whether it found a match in that range. It never touches your disk outside its own BOINC slot directory, never opens a network connection of its own (all networking is BOINC's own client, the same one every other BOINC project uses), and never asks for or needs anything from you besides spare CPU/GPU cycles.

Second: the part that matters most -- what happens if a key is actually found -- is deliberately built so that no single moment of automation can move funds anywhere. See "If a key is found" below for exactly how that works, in real technical detail, not just a promise.

Third: bitboinc is one project in the Athena network, a set of independent open-source projects run by the same person under the same name, with a public track record you can look at independently rather than take on faith. This isn't a project that appeared out of nowhere to ask for your compute time.

If something here still looks unclear or you want to verify a specific claim, ask on IRC (see below) -- questions about exactly how any part of this works are welcome, and we'd genuinely rather explain it than have you guess.

How it works

1. Two apps, two methods. Potamos scans a range of private keys sequentially, one by one, checking each against the target address. It's simple and exhaustive, but only practical for smaller ranges. Keraunos runs Pollard's kangaroo algorithm instead, which is vastly faster than brute force -- but it only works on a puzzle whose public key has already been exposed on-chain (which happens if that address has ever sent a transaction, not just received one). Most of the still-unclaimed puzzles don't have an exposed public key, which narrows down what Keraunos can actually target at any given time.

2. Volunteers work together, not just in parallel. A kangaroo search doesn't just split a range into pieces and hand each piece to a different computer -- that would throw away most of the algorithm's advantage. Instead, every volunteer's computer runs its own randomized search over the same range, and periodically reports the distinguishing points it finds back to the project. The moment any two of those points -- from any two computers, possibly on opposite sides of the world -- collide, the private key can be computed directly. More volunteers genuinely means faster progress on the same target, not just more redundant work.

3. One active target at a time. Only one puzzle is worked at a time per app, so effort isn't spread thin. Solving a puzzle is detected automatically the instant a real collision happens (no polling, no delay): the server immediately stops generating any more work for that puzzle -- both Potamos and Keraunos -- and automatically activates the next queued target so volunteers' computers don't sit idle waiting for a human to notice. If someone outside the project claims a target's coins first (racing us to the same puzzle, which does happen -- these are public, famous addresses other groups also search), that's caught the next time the project owner checks the target's on-chain balance, and the switch to the next target follows the same automatic path.

4. Checking results. Every result your computer sends back is independently checked before it is accepted, the same way any BOINC project validates work, and you're credited for it.

If a key is found

This is the part most worth being precise about, so here is exactly what happens, in order:

1. The moment two distinguished points collide (or, for Potamos, the moment a direct match is found), the server encrypts the raw private key immediately, in the same process that discovered it -- using RSA-4096 with OAEP padding, a well-established, standard encryption scheme, not anything custom. Only the encrypted result is ever written anywhere: to the database, to the project's logs, and to a notification email sent to the project owner. The plaintext key exists only for a moment, in memory, during that one encryption step, and is never written to disk or logged.

2. The matching decryption key -- the only thing in the world that can turn that ciphertext back into a usable private key -- is not on this server, has never been on this server, and is not in any code repository. It exists only on hardware the project owner personally controls, offline.

3. Nothing moves automatically. There is no code path, anywhere in this project, that takes a found key and sends a transaction. The server's job ends at "store the encrypted result and tell a human." A person then manually retrieves the encrypted value, decrypts it offline on their own machine, verifies with independent math that the decrypted key actually corresponds to that puzzle's known target address (so a corrupted or wrong decryption can never be mistaken for a real find), and only then manually sweeps the funds to a hardware wallet. Each of these is a deliberate, separate, manual step -- not an automated pipeline with a human rubber-stamp at the end.

4. Once the funds are confirmed safely moved, they are split four ways: a share to keep the platform running, a share to science projects, a share to nature and environmental protection, and a share to the volunteers themselves. The volunteers' share is not divided evenly among everyone who ever ran the project -- it is given out by a random drawing among the people who contributed valid work on that specific puzzle recently, weighted by how much they contributed. A bigger contribution means better odds, not a bigger guarantee.

We don't publish exactly which sub-ranges have already been searched -- that information would let other, unrelated search efforts skip straight past the parts our own volunteers already covered. What we do publish is aggregate progress: how many distinguishing points have been found so far and roughly how many keys that represents, without revealing the map of where. See the puzzle progress page for the current numbers.

Any computer, CPU or GPU, can take part. Join the project below to get started.

Chat with us

If you have questions about attaching, want help troubleshooting a task that failed, want to know which puzzle we're currently working on and why, or just want to talk to other volunteers and the people running the project, we're on IRC. It's also where we announce things first: a new puzzle target, a change in strategy, or -- hopefully one day -- a key actually being found.

Network: Libera.Chat (irc.libera.chat:6697, TLS)
Channel: #bitboinc

Any IRC client works. If you'd rather not hunt for one, we recommend our own client, Rhizome -- just point it at irc.libera.chat:6697 (TLS) and join #bitboinc.

This is also the general chat for the wider Athena project family, not just bitboinc -- as new projects launch, they'll get their own channel on the same network, and we'll list them here.

Already joined? Log in.

The problem with statistics websites.
For some reason unknown to me, stats.free-dc.org has delisted us. I haven't managed to get in touch with them yet. We are transmitting the statistics every hour in the standard BOINC format.
28 Sep 2026, 22:00:37 UTC · Discuss

Welcome
The project is being rolled out in stages. Custom applications for all platforms and device types, as well as for a wide range of CPUs and GPUs, are currently being compiled and should be fully ready within the next day or two.

You will be able to contribute to this project from virtually any device, from the oldest models to the latest ones.

Thank you very much for participating and supporting the project.
28 Sep 2026, 12:24:51 UTC · Discuss

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