[ANN] PCoin (PCN) - RandomX CPU mining | Bitcoin economics | No premine, no ICO

[pars5555]

PCoin (PCN)
The coin anyone can mine

Independent Layer-1 | RandomX CPU proof-of-work | 21,000,000 cap
No premine | No ICO | No IEO | No VCs | No dev fee

pc.am | Explorer | Docs | GitHub | X | Telegram

What it is

PCoin is an independent Layer-1 blockchain. Own genesis block, own network magic,
own ports, own address prefixes, own UTXO set. It is not a token, not an ERC-20,
not a sidechain, and it does not settle on anyone else's chain.

It is a fork of the Bitcoin Core v29.4 codebase with proof-of-work replaced by
RandomX - the same CPU-friendly, ASIC-resistant algorithm Monero uses.
Bitcoin's economics are kept exactly as they are: 21,000,000 cap, 50 PCN block
reward, halving every 210,000 blocks, 600-second target spacing.

The point is narrow and I will state it plainly: Bitcoin proved neutral digital
money works, and then mining it moved to industrial ASIC farms. PCoin restarts
that experiment with one change - the hardware you already own is the mining
hardware. A laptop competes. An Android phone competes.


Honest status - read this before anything else

• There is no exchange listing. PCN is not traded anywhere. There is no
  price, no market, no volume, and nothing to speculate on today. I applied to
  CoinMarketCap on 9 August; they replied that an asset must trade on an exchange
  feeding them data, and offered a paid fast-track for USD 5,000, which I declined.
  That is the honest state of it.
• There is no mining pool yet. Mining is solo only, using the miner built
  into the node. On a young chain that means real variance - a small CPU may wait
  days between blocks. A pool is being written and is the next thing I ship; the
  share validator and block assembly are working and tested against the live chain,
  but it is not accepting miners yet. I will post here when it is.
• The chain is young. Launched 1 August 2026. At the time of writing it
  is around height 3,222 - about twelve days old.
• Supply is concentrated. The largest single address holds about 43% of
  coins, and roughly 75% is attributable to me across several addresses. It is not
  a premine and not an allocation - for the first weeks I was very nearly the only
  person mining, and anyone mining from block 1 could have earned the same share.
  It falls as others join. Details and how to check it yourself are below.

If you are here for a pump, this is the wrong thread. If you want to point a CPU
at a young chain and see what happens, read on.


Specifications

Ticker	PCN
Algorithm	RandomX (key "PCoin/RandomX/v1"), CPU-friendly, ASIC-resistant
Block IDs	double-SHA256 (unchanged); only the PoW hash is RandomX
Max supply	21,000,000 PCN
Block reward	50 PCN
Halving	every 210,000 blocks
Block time	600 seconds target
Difficulty	LWMA, retargeting EVERY block. Active since height 2800. Below 2800 the chain used Bitcoin's 2016-block retarget
Coinbase maturity	100 blocks
P2P port	9444
RPC port	9443 (note: P2P minus one, not plus one)
Address format	bech32, prefix pc1
Config file	pcoin.conf (NOT bitcoin.conf - a node handed the wrong name ignores it silently)
Data directory	~/.pcoin on Linux, %LOCALAPPDATA%\PCoin on Windows
Premine	None. Zero. Every coin mined from block 1.

Genesis timestamp: "PCoin 01/Aug/2026 an independent chain is born"


The three consensus differences from Bitcoin Core v29.4

1. RandomX proof-of-work - active from genesis. See
src/crypto/pow_randomx.cpp. Block IDs remain double-SHA256, so every RPC
hash you are used to is unchanged; only the PoW check differs. The RandomX key is
the fixed string "PCoin/RandomX/v1" and never rotates, unlike Monero's 2048-block
re-key - so a pool or a miner builds the VM once.

2. LWMA difficulty - active since height 2800. Above that height
difficulty retargets every block instead of every 2016. A two-week retarget
window is far too slow for a chain with little hashrate; a single miner arriving
or leaving otherwise distorts the chain for days. The rollout was height-gated
and every node followed it without a split. See src/pow.cpp and
consensus.lwmaHeight in src/kernel/chainparams.cpp.

3. Future-block-time limit - tightened from Bitcoin's 2 hours to 15
minutes at that same height 2800. Below it, the 2-hour rule still applied. It was
height-gated deliberately: an ungated change would have split the network.

Everything else - the UTXO model, script, SegWit, the wallet, the RPC surface -
is upstream Bitcoin Core and behaves the way you expect.


How to mine (5 minutes)

There is no separate miner to install. The miner is built into the node.

Linux (Debian/Ubuntu) - one line, verifies its own download against the
release checksums and then runs a setup wizard:

Code:

curl -fsSL https://pc.am/dl/install.sh | sudo sh

Windows - portable zip with the node, the CLI and a tray miner:
pcoin-win64-miner.zip
Or the scripted install, which pins and verifies the hash:

Code:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File install.ps1

(install.ps1 is at pc.am/dl/install.ps1.)
Mining is OFF by default on purpose - a node that mines before it has synced is
building on a chain it has not verified. Turn it on from the tray once synced.

There is no .exe installer and there will not be one. The Inno Setup stub was
being flagged by a Defender machine-learning heuristic as a reputation false
positive, so the installer was dropped and the zip is the only Windows artifact.
Note the binaries are unsigned, so SmartScreen will warn on first run.

Android:
miner APK |
wallet APK
Uninstalling the app destroys the wallet in app-private storage, so write your
recovery phrase down first.

Manual Linux control, if you skipped the wizard:

Code:

alias pcli='sudo -u pcoin pcoin-cli -datadir=/var/lib/pcoin'
pcli createwallet "main"
ADDR=$(pcli getnewaddress)
pcli startmining "$ADDR" 4        # 4 threads; 0 = all cores
pcli getcpuminerinfo

Build from source:

Code:

git clone https://github.com/pars5555/pcoin
cd pcoin
cmake -B build -DBUILD_GUI=OFF -DENABLE_WALLET=ON -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build -j$(nproc)

Binaries keep their upstream names (bitcoind, bitcoin-cli). If you also run
Bitcoin Core, always pass -datadir explicitly.


Verify everything yourself

I would rather you checked than took my word.

Supply - published as bare-number endpoints, generated from a full node
and refreshed every 10 minutes:

Code:

https://pc.am/supply/circulating.txt
https://pc.am/supply/total.txt
https://pc.am/supply/immature.txt
https://pc.am/supply/max.txt
https://pc.am/supply/supply.json     (includes the written methodology)

circulating = total minus immature, because the most recent 100 coinbases are
consensus-unspendable until they mature. No locked, vested or reserved supply
exists, so nothing else is deducted. At the time of writing: 160,900 total,
5,000 immature, 155,900 circulating.

Distribution - as of 13 August 2026, 44 addresses hold a balance. The
largest holds about 43% of supply and roughly 75% is mine across several
addresses. explorer.pc.am - look whenever you like.

One thing worth understanding if you check later and get a different number: like
any Bitcoin-derived wallet, mine rotates its change address on every spend, so
"the big address" is not a fixed address and the top-address percentage moves
whenever I pay for anything. Judge the concentration on the total across
addresses, not on one address you saw quoted in a forum post.

The diff against upstream - the public repo is a squashed import, so
git diff v29.4..main will not work directly. Do this instead:

Code:

git clone https://github.com/pars5555/pcoin && cd pcoin
git remote add upstream https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin
git fetch upstream tag v29.4
git diff v29.4..main -- src/

Releases are published with SHA-256 checksums. Android APKs are signed
with certificate SHA-256

Code:

2dc08424507c08c12f5afb7ce7328d5f4fec772dde04de40d69a69e8dcaccb32

which you can confirm yourself with apksigner verify --print-certs.
Checksums prove the file is intact; they are not signatures, and the builds are
not reproducible yet. Both gaps are stated in doc/REPRODUCIBLE-BUILDS.md rather
than glossed over.


What you can actually do with it today

Not a market, and I want to be careful with the wording: PCN currently buys
credit in four services I run - an uptime checker, a Telegram website-builder
bot, an AI control panel, and a 3D-model generator. Each publishes a deposit
address, waits for confirmations, reads a rate at credit time and stamps the rate
it used on the record. The integration guide is public at
docs.pc.am if you want to accept PCN somewhere too.

That is a use, not a price. It is an internal credit rate I set, not an
orderbook, and nobody should read it as a valuation.


What is coming, and what is not promised

• A mining pool - the honest gap, and the next thing I ship. RandomX over
  a Bitcoin-style header means no existing pool software works unmodified, so it
  needed writing. The share validator agrees with the chain on 100 real blocks and
  the block assembly is accepted by a node; what remains is the share accounting
  and payouts. Solo mining stays supported and is not going away.
• Seeds run by other people - all three DNS/fixed seeds are mine today.
  Existing nodes keep their peers if I vanish, but new nodes would struggle to
  bootstrap. If you run a stable node and want to be a seed, say so.

Not promised: a listing, a price, a partnership, or a date for any of them.


Who

One developer. No company, no team, no investors, nothing sold to anyone. If
that is disqualifying for you, that is a reasonable position to hold.

Questions here or on Telegram. If you find a bug in consensus code I want to
hear about it more than I want a compliment.

pc.am

[pars5555]

The pool is open.

Code:

pool.pc.am:3333

Paid directly from each block's coinbase - no pool wallet, no private key on the
server, no withdrawal to request, nothing an operator could run off with. PPLNS,
2% fee off the block reward, minimum 0.00000294 PCN. Login is your payout address;
no registration.

Live stats and the exact command for your OS: pool.pc.am

Needs v1.3.0 or newer - both the node and bitcoin-cli. Solo still works
exactly as before.

Also posted a practical CPU-mining guide on the Mining board:
topic 5591141

[pars5555]

Update: rx/pcoin submitted to xmrigCC; pool fixed for third-party miners; one miner now holds >50% of hashrate

Three things since the last update, and the third is the one that matters most.

1. PCoin can be mined with xmrig now

An rx/pcoin implementation is submitted upstream — open, not yet reviewed or merged:
https://github.com/Bendr0id/xmrigCC/pull/435

Linux build with checksums: https://github.com/pars5555/xmrigCC/releases/tag/rx-pcoin-v1
The node's built-in miner remains the supported path on every platform, Windows included.

2. The pool was rejecting every share from standard xmrig miners

Nonce byte order: the pool and the node agreed with each other and disagreed with the rest of the ecosystem, so it was invisible until a third-party miner existed. Both conventions are accepted now.

3. One solo miner currently holds a majority of block production

Measured over the last 60 blocks: one address found 34 of them, 56.7%. Not me. The same measurement read 50% two hours earlier, so it is rising.

A miner above 50% can reorganise the chain and double-spend. Nothing has gone wrong — supply is exact, no reorgs, three seeds healthy — but a young chain with one party over half its hashrate is a real risk, and anyone deciding whether to mine or accept PCN should hear it from me rather than discover it. Verify on https://explorer.pc.am ; every coinbase is public.

More independent miners is the only thing that fixes it.

Current state, all checkable

Height 3945, about 535 s/block over the last 300, roughly 8,100 PCN/day emitted, 192,250 PCN circulating. Pool: 22 miners.

Still true

PCN is not traded on any exchange, there is no way to sell it, and it should be treated as worth zero dollars. No premine, no ICO, no founder allocation, no dev fee — 100% of the block reward goes to miners. I hold roughly three quarters of what has been mined so far, which falls as others mine, and is the top entries on the public rich list.

[pars5555]

Correction: my 56.7% concentration figure was measured over too few blocks. Over 300 blocks it is 45.0%.

I published a number I should not have trusted, so here is the fix before anyone repeats it.

What I said

"One address found 34 of the last 60 blocks, 56.7%", and that it was rising because an earlier reading was 50%.

What is actually true

Over the last 300 blocks that address found 135 — 45.0% (95% CI 39.4-50.6%).

The 56.7% was real, but it was a 60-block sample. Block discovery is Poisson: at p≈0.5 over 60 blocks the standard error is about 6.5 percentage points, so any single reading swings roughly ±13 points at 95% confidence. Four consecutive 60-block readings I took were 50.0, 56.7, 41.7, 53.3 — those are not a trend, they are one number sampled four times. I read the second as "rising" and the third as "falling" and both claims were noise.

The disclosure itself does not go away

45.0% with an interval reaching 50.6% still means one party sits at roughly half of block production, and the data cannot tell me whether it is just under or just over. That was the point of disclosing it and it still stands. What changes is that I cannot claim it is rising, and I cannot claim it is above 50%.

A second thing I have to disclose, because it is now the larger number

Over the same 300 blocks the pool found 51.0% (95% CI 45.3-56.7%). My pool. That is a majority of block production sitting behind one stratum endpoint I operate.

It is a weaker concentration than one solo miner — 27 independent miners point at it and any of them can leave or point elsewhere in one config line, and the pool cannot spend their coins — but a majority is a majority and I am not going to report someone else's 45% and stay quiet about my own 51%. A second independent pool would be the real fix; the code is MIT and I will help anyone who wants to run one.

Nothing has actually gone wrong

Supply is exact against height, no reorgs beyond the ordinary one-block kind, three seeds healthy. This is a disclosure about capability, not an incident.

Current numbers, all checkable

Height 4120, about 494 s/block over the last 300, roughly 8,737 PCN/day emitted, 201,000 PCN circulating. Pool: 27 miners.

Every coinbase is public on https://explorer.pc.am — and if you check, use a window of several hundred blocks, which is the actual lesson here.

Unchanged

PCN is not traded on any exchange, there is no way to sell it, and it should be treated as worth zero dollars. No premine, no ICO, no founder allocation, no dev fee.

[pars5555]

Follow-up, same day: a DIFFERENT miner is now at 71%

I corrected a concentration figure a few hours ago. Re-measuring properly turned up something worse, so here it is straight away rather than tomorrow.

What changed

The address I have been reporting on is not the problem any more. A different address, which had never mined a block before height 4114, has found roughly seven blocks in ten ever since:

Code:

blocks 4069-4118    8%
blocks 4119-4168   76%
blocks 4169-4218   73%
blocks 4219-4268   67%
blocks 4125-4274   71%   (95% CI 64-78%)

That is one party, solo mining — every one of its blocks is a single-output coinbase, not a pool payout — holding a sustained majority of block production for about a day. It is not mine, and it is not on my pool.

What that means

A miner above 50% can reorganise recent blocks and reverse a payment that already looked settled. This is the plain 51% condition, and it is live right now.

What has actually happened: nothing. The explorer reports reorg_count 0, no blocks unwound, and supply exact against height. I have no evidence of hostile intent and the likeliest explanation is dull — someone with real CPU capacity pointed it at a chain that is free to mine. Capability is still capability, which is why this is a disclosure and not a shrug.

What I changed

Against a party holding 70%, no confirmation depth is provably safe — waiting longer buys time and cost, not certainty. The services that credit PCN deposits therefore pair their crediting depth with watching for reorgs, rather than trusting depth alone.

I am deliberately not publishing what that depth is. Printing the number a service credits at, directly beneath a 71% concentration figure, tells anyone who wanted to reverse a deposit exactly how deep to dig — and it is an operational setting, not something you need in order to judge the chain. The concentration figure is the disclosure; that number is not.

Edited: this paragraph originally named a specific confirmation count. The count has since changed, and publishing it was a mistake on its own terms.

pc.am carries the same disclosure as of tonight.

Check it yourself

Every coinbase is public on https://explorer.pc.am . A pool block pays many addresses; a solo block pays one. Use a window of several hundred blocks — 60 is mostly sampling noise, which is the mistake I made this morning and corrected this afternoon.

The fix is the same as it has always been

More independent miners, and a second pool run by somebody who is not me. That is the entire ask. There is still no exchange, no orderbook and no way to sell PCN, so I am not asking you to buy anything.

[rabidmining]

here is XMRig that works for Pcoin https://gitlab.com/rabidmining/xmrig-rabid-pcoin

[Firsttime13]

Some help would be greatly appreciated: How do I get an address in order to mine to? I have tried with the bitcoin-wallet from pcoin folder and see a wallet created but cant see the address.

Thank you

[K3Baz]

I put a note on GitHub issue were some of the words on the 24 word recovery phase are blank.  I tried several differnt 24 word phrasing the all had blanks.  The 12 word prase seems to work, but whan I try to save it I get an error that there is a wallet aready on my system, the original 24 word wallet with blanks.  I don't know how to move farward.

[JohPe]

I too encountered the problem with blank words in the passphrase, both 12 and 24.

Any other wallet I can use? (Forward the earnings to a new address)