What is walletgen?

WalletGen is a command line program written in C++ that generates cryptocurrency wallets and checks whether any of them already hold a balance. It works with Bitcoin as well as Ethereum and other chains that use the same underlying technology, such as BNB and Polygon. It builds each wallet using the same standard methods real wallets use: BIP39 for turning a random seed phrase into a wallet, BIP44 for deriving addresses from it, and Bech32 address formatting for Bitcoin, with Keccak256 hashing used for the Ethereum style chains. Once a wallet is generated, WalletGen checks its balance either by comparing the address against a large downloadable list of known addresses with funds, which is faster, or by querying a public blockchain explorer directly over the internet in real time. Because it is written in C++ and can use multiple CPU threads or a graphics card, the README states it runs meaningfully faster than similar tools written in Python. Prebuilt versions are available for Windows, macOS, and Linux, along with an early Android build, and the project also provides large precomputed address databases, over a gigabyte each for Bitcoin and for the combined EVM chains, to speed up local checking without needing constant network requests. The README frames the tool as being for recovering a wallet you have lost track of, by regenerating seed phrases and checking them against known balances, and it includes a short disclaimer that it is meant for research and education, and should only be used with wallets a person owns or has explicit permission to access. In practice, generating and checking large numbers of practically random seed phrases against every known address is a search across other people's wallets as much as it is a way to find one's own, so anyone using it should keep that disclaimer and its limits firmly in mind.