[ANN][TWIST] TwistCoin | SHA256d | No premine | Solo-mine with your home ASIC

[thewal]

TwistCoin (TWIST)
A Bitcoin Core fork with twisted parameters, restarted from block 0 - sized for home SHA256d miners.
Website | Whitepaper | Code audit | Source (GitLab) | Explorer | Pool

What is it?
TwistCoin is Bitcoin Core v31.1 with a small, reviewable set of changes: its own genesis/network identity and a faster pace. Transaction format, Script, SegWit, Taproot and SHA256d PoW are unchanged.
Launch difficulty was calibrated to one ~1.3 TH/s home ASIC, so a Bitaxe-class device can still find real blocks and keep the full reward.

Specs

Ticker	TWIST
Algorithm	SHA256d - any Bitcoin ASIC, no firmware change
Block time	2 minutes
Difficulty retarget	every 144 blocks (~4.8 h), max 4x
Block reward	20 TWIST, halving every 525,600 blocks (~2 years)
Max supply	~21,024,000 TWIST
Addresses	tw1... / T... / S...
Ports	P2P 8433 / RPC 8432
Mainnet launch	2026-08-15 20:27 UTC

Fair launch
- No premine, no founder reward, no dev fee in consensus, no ICO / sale / airdrop.
- The genesis coinbase commits to Bitcoin block 962,555 and its hash: no TWIST block can predate it. Check block 0.
- Genesis was mined by a real home ASIC at the real starting difficulty - no cheap low-difficulty ramp-up.
- Full disclosure: as with any fair launch, the very first blocks went to whoever was mining, which at first was only the project's own home ASIC. ~ 575,000 TWIST / tw1q7mwuzflgsan89avf64xdl022s6k3u2ehqjsmr8 - every coinbase is public on the explorer.

Network status (22 Oct 2026)
Height ~46,570 | 7-day hashrate ~22.5 TH/s | ~931,500 TWIST mined (4.4% of supply) | 3 public nodes, 1 public solo pool.

Mine

Code:

Stratum:  stratum+tcp://pool.twistcoin.org:3333
Username: <your TWIST address>.<worker>
Password: x

Solo pool, 0% fee: if your ASIC finds a block, the whole reward goes straight to your address. The pool never holds funds.
Need an address? Offline address generator (no prebuilt GUI wallet yet).

Run a node - the single most useful contribution right now.
Build from source or Docker (guide), then:

Code:

addnode=node.twistcoin.org:8433

Known risks - please read
- 51% attacks are cheap: a tiny slice of Bitcoin's hashrate, owned or rented, can overpower the chain. Wait for many confirmations.
- Bitcoin's difficulty algorithm is inherited as-is, including the timewarp weakness (BIP94 not enforced, same as Bitcoin mainnet).
- All public nodes and the pool are currently run by the project. Independent operators are very welcome.
- A fork can introduce bugs: every change to Bitcoin Core is reviewed in the code audit.

Governance: TwistCoin follows Bitcoin Core. Upstream releases get merged, and no consensus rules are invented here.
Not an investment: no exchange listing at this time, and no promise about value. It's an experimental network for people who enjoy mining and running nodes.

Links
Website | Whitepaper | Code audit | Source (GitLab) | Explorer | Pool

Questions, critiques and bug reports are welcome here or on GitLab.

Note: written with AI assistance because my English is limited - content reviewed and verified by me.

[solarsurfer]

Hi thewal,

I'm Andy from Shears Mining, a small solo/merge-mining pool for home SHA-256 miners (Bitaxe and similar): https://sha256-mining.shears.co.uk

Nice to see a clean, honest launch. We've archived the source and compared it against Bitcoin Core v31.1. Apart from the subsidy, the halving interval and the chain parameters, it's plain Bitcoin Core: no hidden fees or extra rules. Our node synced to 47,183 in a few minutes.

We'd like to add TWIST to our pool as a solo coin (0% fee, the whole block goes to the finder's own address), which gives the network one more independent pool and node.

One suggestion. Since your post, the network hashrate has jumped to roughly 50-100 TH/s, so blocks are coming in about every minute until the next 144-block retarget. With a 144-block window and a 4x cap, every big miner arriving or leaving gives hours of fast blocks followed by hours of very slow ones. The timewarp issue you mentioned (BIP94 off) is also cheap to fix while the chain is young. We've helped other small SHA-256 coins (for example Perbug) move to a per-block LWMA difficulty adjustment at a scheduled fork height, and enable BIP94 at the same time. If you're interested, we're happy to write and test the patch, and send it for you to review and release. You stay in charge of the coin.

Either way, good luck with TwistCoin!

Andy - Shears Mining