Pollard's Kangaroo Pool for tackling the #130 Puzzle

11 replies 450 views
Posts: 28 · Reputation: 229
#1Apr 6, 2026, 08:55 PM
I'm excited to share that I've wrapped up my project building on JeanLucPons' original code, and the performance boost is impressive around 1.5x to 2x faster. My version runs on CPU only, compatible with Windows 64-bit, and should work with any standard Unix-like OS (just tested on ubuntu/Linux). Also, I'm working on supporting arm64 CPUs. You can check out the results through the demo executable we've shared in our telegram group. The complete program that connects to the pool is also available there. Right now, the program is closed source. The reason behind this is that I want to establish a single pool for the 130th puzzle first. Once I see some participation, I’ll make the code open source on my github account. When the reward gets found, we’ll split it up based on how much work everyone contributed. We'll use IPs logged on our server as proof of identity. Thanks!
7 Reply Quote Share
gang2014Member
Posts: 20 · Reputation: 189
#2Apr 6, 2026, 10:35 PM
I was checking your Telegram group and found that you are suggesting to download the .exe file. I don't think anyone will be interested to download a .exe file from a brand new member of this forum knowing that there are people who are waiting for an opportunity to scam some of us members. The Git page is empty too.
3 Reply Quote Share
Posts: 28 · Reputation: 229
#3Apr 7, 2026, 04:35 AM
You are right; this is not recommended, due to the obvious reasons you mentioned - but you can use a VM or use VirusTotal or any anti-virus to check and see it's nothing bad. Anyways, I am going to release the source code of the client now. https://github.com/puzzlesearch/kangaroo For anyone who has doubts about the binaries - just compile yourself.
2 Reply Quote Share
kevinatlasFull Member
Posts: 25 · Reputation: 253
#4Apr 8, 2026, 06:14 AM
If you want to upload the file, please check it a few times before uploading it Don't waste your time... It doesn't work at all.
4 Reply Quote Share
LuckyCoinLegendary
Posts: 832 · Reputation: 4795
#5Apr 8, 2026, 07:41 AM
Why would anybody be interested in a CPU version of Kangaroo now that Moore's Law has basically died out and NVIDIA RTX gpus are getting ever faster?
2 Reply Quote Share
hash_bossLegendary
Posts: 1166 · Reputation: 5261
#6Apr 10, 2026, 09:43 AM
Now it's interesting. I know ARM generally is slower than x86 CPU, but people usually claim it has better energy/performance ratio. I wonder if has better energy/performance ratio than GPU.
3 Reply Quote Share
Posts: 28 · Reputation: 229
#7Apr 10, 2026, 01:23 PM
My CPU implementation produces on an i7-13700f the same performance as my GTX 1080 with JLP's code. CPUs are way more popular, and thus we can use many more computers if we focus on the CPUs and get better outcome.
3 Reply Quote Share
LuckyCoinLegendary
Posts: 832 · Reputation: 4795
#8Apr 10, 2026, 07:33 PM
Yes that's great and all, but the puzzles are getting harder. Now that the previously considered "hard" puzzles like #64 have been solved, the difficulty of the next puzzle increases by a multiplication factor. This, I'm sure you already know. I don't see anyone trying to attack #66 or #130 with the older GPU generations nowadays. Maybe it's because people are upgrading setups but it also must be understood that if you want to be able to crack the puzzle at the same rate as before, you will need more powerful hardware, otherwise it will take longer. That's why they're mostly using 30xx and 40xx GPUs nowadays. Your CPU may give you a good performance but you will need significantly more of them in order to get the same cracking time. It helps that CPUs are getting cheaper but still you'd actually need to buy a new computer for each additional CPU unless there are multi-socket Xeons out there that people can benchmark and show similar performance to the 13700f.
0 Reply Quote Share
Posts: 28 · Reputation: 229
#9Apr 10, 2026, 08:37 PM
I was actually thinking about running this on a lot of not-so-strong computers, rather than focusing on running on a small amount of strong ones. For example, I have two old computers who are idle, I can use them for this project.
1 Reply Quote Share
Posts: 28 · Reputation: 229
#10Apr 11, 2026, 01:04 AM
Indeed. ARM is generally much more efficient than GPU, but for this task, i can't tell exactly, because i didn't benchmark it yet. remember that a GPU must be connected to a computer with a CPU to run properly. hence we need energy for the CPU and CPU memory as well.
3 Reply Quote Share
LuckyCoinLegendary
Posts: 832 · Reputation: 4795
#11Apr 13, 2026, 06:46 AM
Alright, but it would help if you encrypted all the pool traffic with TLS, just so that you could run this on computers in different areas without having to worry about LAN headaches or about someone eavesdropping on the traffic and stealing he private key after your pool solves the puzzle. I honk all the M1/2/3/4 chips in particular might be faster than all RTX GPUs at compute - I don't know. There's no device-to-host copy overhead at least.
4 Reply Quote Share
Posts: 17 · Reputation: 226
#12Apr 13, 2026, 07:24 AM
I have a version from here: https://github.com/mikorist/Kangaroo-256-bit Puzzle 65 for ~50 seconds on AMD Ryzen 9 7950X
0 Reply Quote Share
?Reply
Sign in to reply to this topic

Related topics