BitBOINC
BitBOINC is an active BOINC-based volunteer computing project that uses donated computer time to run several independent research efforts on the same pool of volunteer CPU and GPU resources.[1] The project launched as a search for the private keys associated with selected, long-unclaimed Bitcoin puzzle addresses, and subsequently added an application targeting the Certicom ECC Challenge and a gravitational microlensing modelling application.[2] The project is part of the Athena network and is operated by Alperen Yavuz.[1]
BitBOINC distinguishes its Bitcoin-related work from Bitcoin mining. It does not create new coins, mine blocks, or contribute to the operation or security of the Bitcoin network. Instead, it searches a fixed set of publicly known addresses whose private keys were deliberately placed within specified numerical ranges as a public challenge.[2]
History
BitBOINC was publicly announced on 28 September 2026. The project initially described its applications as being rolled out in stages while applications for different operating systems, processor types, and graphics processors were compiled and tested.[3] On the same day, the project reported that it had been delisted by the third-party statistics site stats.free-dc.org, stating that it was exporting statistics hourly in the standard BOINC format and had been unable to reach the site's operators.[4]
On 29 September 2026, the project announced that both of its original search applications were active. It also announced support for Windows, Linux, macOS, and Android on CPUs, together with GPU support using NVIDIA CUDA, OpenCL, and Apple Silicon Metal.[5]
Later on 29 September 2026, the project announced a third application, Sphinx, which applies the same kangaroo search used by Keraunos to the Certicom ECC Challenge rather than to Bitcoin addresses.[6] On 30 September 2026, a fourth application, Kampylos, was announced as being in development; unlike the other applications it performs astrophysical modelling rather than cryptographic search.[7]
Research and computation
Bitcoin puzzle addresses
The project works on a series of Bitcoin addresses created as a public cryptographic challenge in 2015. According to BitBOINC, the puzzles were numbered sequentially, with the private key for puzzle number n placed somewhere in an n-bit range. The series extends to puzzle number 160, although many of the larger puzzles remain unsolved.[2]
The search is based on the relationship between a Bitcoin private key and its corresponding public key and address. In simplified form, a candidate private key k is transformed into a public key using elliptic-curve multiplication:
where G is the generator point of the elliptic curve used by Bitcoin. The resulting public key is then processed to derive an address. A candidate is successful only when the derived address matches the target address.
The project does not publish the precise subranges already searched. It instead publishes aggregate progress information, because revealing the searched locations could allow unrelated searches to avoid the same regions.[2] Aggregate figures are published on a puzzle progress page, which reports distinguished-point counts for Keraunos and completed-chunk counts for Potamos, along with the on-chain balances of the queued target addresses, refreshed hourly from a public block explorer.[8]
As of 2 October 2026, the project listed two puzzles as actively being searched and a queue of a further 76 puzzles, of which four were reported to have an exposed public key and therefore to be eligible for Keraunos. The combined balance of the remaining targets was given as approximately 903 BTC.[8]
Applications
BitBOINC provides four applications, three of which are cryptographic searches and one of which is an astrophysics application.[9]
| Application | Task | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Potamos | Sequential keyspace scan of Bitcoin puzzle ranges | Active |
| Keraunos | Bounded discrete-logarithm search (kangaroo) on Bitcoin puzzles | Active |
| Sphinx | Discrete-logarithm search against the Certicom ECC Challenge | Active |
| Kampylos | Binary-lens gravitational microlensing grid search | Beta / testing |
Potamos
Potamos performs a sequential search, testing private keys one at a time. The project describes this method as exhaustive but practical mainly for smaller key ranges, noting that it does not require the target's public key to be known.[2][8]
Keraunos
Keraunos uses Pollard's kangaroo algorithm, a discrete-logarithm search method whose expected effort grows with the square root of the range width rather than linearly. BitBOINC states that Keraunos can be used only when the public key for a target has already been exposed on the Bitcoin blockchain, such as when the address has previously sent a transaction; most unclaimed puzzles do not meet this condition.[2][8]
Keraunos is described as a collaborative rather than merely parallel search: each host runs its own randomised walk over the same range and periodically reports distinguished points to a shared table, and a collision between points reported by any two hosts allows the private key to be computed directly.[2]
Only one target is processed at a time for each application, and a given puzzle may be worked by one application, the other, or both simultaneously.[8] According to the project, a collision is detected automatically, upon which the server stops generating further work for that puzzle and activates the next queued target; if an outside party claims a target's coins first, the switch occurs after the project operator's next check of the target's on-chain balance.[2]
As of 29 September 2026, BitBOINC reported that Keraunos was working on puzzle number 140 and Potamos was working on puzzle number 71.[5] Both assignments were still current on 2 October 2026.[8]
Sphinx
Sphinx, announced on 29 September 2026, targets the Certicom ECC Challenge, a set of elliptic-curve discrete-logarithm problems published by Certicom in 1997 with cash prizes attached. The application reuses the collaborative kangaroo search mechanism developed for Keraunos, applied to a non-Bitcoin elliptic curve; the project emphasises that no coins, wallets, or addresses are involved and that the fund-handling procedures described for the Bitcoin puzzles therefore do not apply to it.[2][6]
The project states that Sphinx's first target is ECCp-131, with ECCp-163 and ECCp-191 queued next, and ECCp-239 and ECCp-359 planned subject to wider-precision arithmetic support.[6] The ECCp-131 problem has been open since the challenge's release in November 1997 and carries a stated prize of US$20,000.[10] BitBOINC states that it has not independently confirmed that the prizes are still honoured and advises participants to treat a solution as a cryptographic achievement rather than as a guaranteed payout.[2][6]
Kampylos
Kampylos (from the Greek καμπύλος, "bent" or "curved") is an astrophysics application that exhaustively models binary-lens gravitational microlensing events, in which light from a background star is bent by a foreground pair of masses such as a binary star or a star with a planet.[11]
Fitting such an event requires a grid search over lens parameters including mass ratio, projected separation, and source trajectory angle. The project notes that the resulting χ² surface is frequently multimodal, so that several distinct parameter combinations may fit the same light curve almost equally well, and that published analyses commonly report the first solution found rather than a complete accounting of the parameter space.[2][11] Each task evaluates the forward-modelled magnification curve against real photometry at every grid point and returns a full χ² map rather than a single best fit. The binary-lens solver is built on the VBMicrolensing library.[7][11]
Input photometry is drawn from the public archives of the OGLE Early Warning System, the MOA alert archive, and the KMTNet data archive, which together have alerted on tens of thousands of events since the 1990s.[11] The project states that results, including complete solution maps, will be published openly on Zenodo, with notable findings submitted to Research Notes of the AAS.[7][11] The project cites the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, launched in August 2026 with microlensing science operations expected from around 2027, as a future source of a substantially larger event stream.[2][11]
Kampylos was listed on the applications page as beta software. On 30 September 2026 the project described it as in development and not yet sending work while the solver underwent correctness testing, and the repository likewise described the effort as early-stage.[7][11] Test work units were nevertheless distributed, and on 1 October 2026 a participant reported that all returned Kampylos tasks had been marked invalid. The project operator responded that Kampylos was a test application whose core code was not yet fully configured and that returned results were being used to support development.[7] The exchange prompted criticism from one participant, who argued that a project distributing work should grant credit for correct results, and support from others, who noted that only large projects typically maintain separate beta-test sites and that beta work units are normal in a newly launched project.[7] The operator also stated that the GPU version of Kampylos had not been released because of an unresolved defect in its FP32 implementation.[7]
As of 2 October 2026 the project's status page reported no valid Kampylos results, with all completed test work units recorded as invalid or in error.[9]
Volunteer computing
BitBOINC distributes work through BOINC. A volunteer installs the BOINC client, attaches it to the BitBOINC project, and allows the client to run tasks according to the volunteer's resource preferences. The project states that any computer with a supported CPU or GPU can participate.[1]
The project reports that returned results are independently checked before being accepted and credited. It also announced that its credit calculation had been changed to use a native BOINC-style calculation based on the work performed by the participant's hardware.[5]
Supported CPU platforms include Windows, Linux, macOS, and Android. GPU acceleration is available through NVIDIA CUDA, OpenCL implementations, and Metal on Apple Silicon, subject to application and hardware support.[5] As of 2 October 2026 the project reported 85 active hosts with NVIDIA CUDA GPUs, 89 with AMD or Intel GPUs using OpenCL, and 4 with Apple GPUs using Metal.[9]
Security and handling of results
BitBOINC states that its applications read the work packet supplied by the project and write their results within the BOINC slot directory. It also states that the applications do not open their own network connections, with communications handled by the BOINC client.[2]
If a private key is found, the project says that the result is encrypted immediately, within the same process that discovered it, using RSA-4096 with OAEP padding, and that the plaintext key is never written to disk or to logs. According to the project, only the encrypted result is stored by the server, in the database, logs, and a notification email, while the corresponding decryption key is kept offline by the project operator and has never been present on the server.[2]
The project further states that it has no automated code path for transferring funds. Its published procedure is for a person to retrieve and decrypt the result offline, independently verify that the key corresponds to the target address, and then manually transfer any funds to a hardware wallet.[2]
BitBOINC describes a proposed distribution of recovered funds among platform operation, science projects, nature and environmental protection, and participating volunteers. The volunteer share is described as a weighted random drawing among recent contributors to the particular puzzle rather than as an equal payment to every participant.[2]
These procedures apply only to the Bitcoin puzzle applications. The project states that no funds or custody arrangements are involved in either Sphinx or Kampylos.[2]
Community
BitBOINC provides project support through the Libera.Chat IRC network. Its listed channel is #bitboinc, reachable at irc.libera.chat:6697 over TLS, and the project recommends its own Rhizome client for users who do not already use an IRC client. The channel is shared by all applications on the project and by the wider Athena project family.[1]
The project also provides account registration, discussion forums, progress information, achievement badges, and user levels through its website. A badge system comprising 100 badges across ten categories, together with an open-ended level and title system, was announced on 29 September 2026.[1][5]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 BitBOINC. Athena. Retrieved 2026-10-02.
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 About BitBOINC. Athena. Retrieved 2026-10-02.
- ↑ (2026-09-28).Welcome. BitBOINC. Retrieved 2026-09-30.
- ↑ (2026-09-28).The problem with statistics websites. BitBOINC. Retrieved 2026-10-02.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 (2026-09-29).BitBOINC is fully up and running. BitBOINC. Retrieved 2026-09-30.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 (2026-09-29).SPHINX. BitBOINC. Retrieved 2026-10-02.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 (2026-09-30).KAMPYLOS. BitBOINC. Retrieved 2026-10-02.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 Bitcoin puzzle progress. BitBOINC. Retrieved 2026-10-02.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Project status. BitBOINC. Retrieved 2026-10-02.
- ↑ Certicom ECC Challenge. Certicom. Retrieved 2026-10-02.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 alplix/kampylos. GitHub. Retrieved 2026-10-02.