Maxwell's vanity public key is a result of how the generator of the secp256k1 was

chosen; as explained by Maxwell himself.

For some reason, the generator G

is the double of the point:

x = 0x00000000000000000000003b78ce563f89a0ed9414f5aa28ad0d96d6795f9c63,
y = 0xc0c686408d517dfd67c2367651380d00d126e4229631fd03f8ff35eef1a61e3c

which is exactly Maxwell's vanity public key. Its private key is

0x7fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff5d576e7357a4501ddfe92f46681b20a1 which is 1/2
, i.e. the inverse of 2 modulo the curve order n. This is also equal to (n+1)/2.

A simple method can be:

draw a random u

in [1,n) where n is the order of G, with n=2256−14551231950b75fc4402da1732fc9bebfh

for secp256k1
compute associated point P0=u×G
keep adding G
to that point, computing Pi=Pi−1+G
until that's a public key with suitable vanity
find the corresponding private key as u+imodn

(the modulus step is unnecessary in practice).

Usually point addition is more costly than point doubling, and it might be better
to use:

draw a random u

in [1,n)
compute associated point P0=u×G
keep doubling that point, computing Pi=Pi−1+Pi−1
until that's a public key with suitable vanity
find the corresponding private key as 2iumodn
.

Then to find a private key to any public key with a specific m bit prefix, with
m>n/2, Pollard Rho is the best shot, with m≤n/2 the fgrieu method is the best.

How do you add a check sum? Might come in handy later.

1) create a template of your desired address ie 1waLLobserverburnaddressxxxxxxxxx

(the last few characters will eventually be random due to checksum)
2) Base58 unencode your burn address into hex -
000A52498DB787B09EEC7C428B8B0C853EA1C2702C4E117611

3) remove the last 4 bytes from the result and call what's left N -
000A52498DB787B09EEC7C428B8B0C853EA1C2702C4E117611

4) sha256(sha256(N)) -
BD0F89693417148626446F3E1EA43A69453FBCF72A024600FB54A2BC34F23387

5) take the first 4 bytes of step 4 and stick it on the end of N -

000A52498DB787B09EEC7C428B8B0C853EA1C2702CBD0F8969

6) base58 encode step 5 - 1waLLobserverburnaddressxxy1oWwkk

done

Code:

vanitygen -k -r ^^123.*321$

This will search for the 123 pattern at the beginning and 321 at the end.
Obviously it doesn't have to be a numerical progression but certainly it will have
to begin and end with a 1