[GUIDE] Mining PCoin (PCN) on an ordinary CPU - RandomX, no separate miner neede

[pars5555]

Short version: PCoin is a Bitcoin Core v29.4 fork with RandomX proof-of-work. The
miner is built into the node, so there is no xmrig to configure, no
stratum URL to get wrong and no config file. One command and your CPU is mining.

Full announcement and the honest disclosures are in the ANN thread:
topic 5591113. This
post is just the practical part.


Start mining in one command

Linux (Debian/Ubuntu). The installer verifies its download against the
release checksums and runs a setup wizard that asks for your payout address:

Code:

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

Windows - portable zip, node + CLI + a tray miner:
github.com/pars5555/pcoin/releases
Mining is off by default on purpose. Turn it on from the tray once the node has
synced - a node that mines before it has verified the chain is building on
something it has not checked, and anything it finds is thrown away.

Android - a miner APK is in the same releases page. A phone does perhaps
50 H/s, which is not much, but it works and it costs you nothing.

Manual control on Linux if you skip the wizard:

Code:

sudo -u pcoin pcoin-cli -datadir=/var/lib/pcoin getcpuminerinfo
sudo -u pcoin pcoin-cli -datadir=/var/lib/pcoin startmining "<your pc1q... address>" 4

The last number is threads; 0 means every core.


What to actually expect from a CPU

Measured on my own machines, light-mode RandomX:

CPU	threads	H/s
i9-10900X (20 threads)	4	264
i9-10900X (20 threads)	10	595
i9-9900K (16 threads)	3	235
6-core desktop	1	74
Android phone	-	~50

More threads is not proportionally more hashrate. Light mode shares a
256 MiB cache, so past roughly a third of your cores you are mostly buying cache
contention. One machine went from 13 threads to 3 and lost only 58% of its
hashrate - per-thread rate nearly doubled. Try a few settings before assuming
100% is correct.


The arithmetic, including the part you will not like

Do not trust a hashrate number in a forum post, including this one. When I
first wrote this the network was around 17,000 H/s; within a day it had risen
several times over, and difficulty with it. Work it out yourself instead - it
takes ten seconds:

Code:

https://pool.pc.am/api/pools

Read networkStats.networkHashrate. The chain emits 50 PCN per block at a
600 second target, so roughly 7,200 PCN a day is split across everyone mining.

So: (your H/s / network H/s) x 7,200 = roughly your PCN per day.

That number falls as more people join - it is a share of a fixed emission,
not a rate. It has already fallen sharply once. If the network doubles, your share
halves, and nothing about your machine changed.

And the caveat that matters more than any of the arithmetic: PCN is not traded
anywhere. There is no exchange, no orderbook and no way to sell it. What it
currently does is buy credit at five services I run (an uptime checker, a Telegram
site builder, an AI control panel and two 3D-model generators) at a rate I set.
That is a use, not a price, and you should treat it as worth zero dollars until a
real market exists.

If you want money, mine something else - genuinely. If you want to point idle
cores at a young chain and hold the coins in case it becomes something, this is
that.


Solo variance, and the pool

Solo mining is a lottery: you find a whole 50 PCN block or you find nothing.
At 500 H/s you would average a block every ~7 hours, but that is an average -
plenty of days you will see nothing and conclude it is broken.

The pool is open. It pays miners directly from each block's coinbase,
so there is no pool wallet, no private key on the server, no withdrawal to
request, and nothing an operator could run off with. PPLNS, 2% fee taken off the
block reward, minimum 0.00000294 PCN (the network dust limit). Your login is your
payout address - there is no registration.

Code:

pool.pc.am:3333

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

You need v1.3.0 or newer, and both the node and bitcoin-cli must be that
version - an older CLI sends the thread count as text and the call fails with a
type error. Solo still works exactly as before if you would rather keep the whole
block reward and the variance that comes with it.


Check everything yourself

Code:

Explorer API   https://explorer.pc.am/api/status
Pool API       https://pool.pc.am/api/pools
Supply         https://pc.am/supply/circulating.txt  (bare number, from a full node)
Source         https://github.com/pars5555/pcoin
Releases       published with SHA-256 checksums

Binaries are unsigned, so Windows SmartScreen will warn on first run. I do
not have a code-signing certificate. Say so plainly rather than have you find out.

Questions here or in the ANN thread.

[bogdan198]

At first glance, everything looks pretty well done—it’s clear you took your project seriously. Guess I should connect a rig to you, who knows, maybe something will actually come of it. 🤝

[pars5555]

Update: PCoin can now be mined with xmrig (xmrigCC), and one miner now holds a majority of hashrate

When I posted this guide the only way to mine PCN was the miner built into the node. That is still the easiest path, but it was also what stopped anyone already running xmrig from pointing spare cores at this chain.

1. rx/pcoin

There is now an rx/pcoin implementation for xmrigCC. It is submitted upstream and has not been reviewed or merged, so treat it accordingly:
https://github.com/Bendr0id/xmrigCC/pull/435

Linux x86-64 build with SHA256SUMS:
https://github.com/pars5555/xmrigCC/releases/tag/rx-pcoin-v1

Code:

./xmrigMiner -o pool.pc.am:3333 -u <your pc1q... address> -a rx/pcoin -t 4

No Windows build from me. Cross-compiling from Linux fails because the prebuilt xmrig deps are UCRT-linked and Ubuntu ships no UCRT mingw compiler. On Windows, either build the branch with MSVC, or just use the node's own miner (pcoin-win64-miner.zip in the PCoin releases) — that is the supported path and needs no trust in a binary from a stranger's fork.

2. If you tried xmrig against the pool before yesterday and got nothing, that was my bug

The pool rejected 100% of shares from any standard xmrig with "share above target", while the miner hashed perfectly. It rebuilt the submitted header with the nonce bytes in the opposite order from the xmrig convention, so it was hashing a header nobody had mined. My node's built-in miner and my pool were written from the same wrong assumption, so they agreed with each other and the bug stayed invisible until a third-party miner existed. Fixed — both byte orders are accepted now. Worth retrying if you gave up.

3. A disclosure I would rather make than have you find

Over the last 60 blocks, one single solo address found 34 of them — 56.7%. That is a majority of block production by one party, and it is not me. Two hours earlier the same measurement read 50%, so it is rising.

A single miner above 50% can reorganise the chain and double-spend. Nothing bad has happened — the chain is healthy, supply is exact, no reorgs — but you should know the number before you decide to point hardware at this. It is checkable: every coinbase is on https://explorer.pc.am

The honest reason I want more independent miners is that one, not price.

4. Current numbers

Height 3945. Blocks landing about every 535 s over the last 300, so roughly 8,100 PCN/day emitted in total. 192,250 PCN circulating. The pool has 22 miners.

Work out your own share rather than trusting any figure in a forum post, including this one. Read networkStats.networkHashrate from https://pool.pc.am/api/pools and compute (your H/s / network H/s) x 8,100. Network hashrate has roughly tripled in three days, so a number I write today is wrong by the weekend.

5. Unchanged, and still the important part

PCN is not traded on any exchange. No orderbook, no way to sell it. Treat it as worth zero dollars until a real market exists. It is a share of a fixed emission, so what you earn falls every time someone else joins. If you want money, mine something else — genuinely.

Everything else in the original post still stands.