Risks and questions.
What can go wrong
- H-01
Proof of work burns electricity
Hashing turns power into heat. A laptop or phone running the miner uses more battery and gets warm, and a desktop GPU can draw hundreds of watts. Your electricity can cost more than anything you earn. Use the throttle, and stop when you are done.
- H-02
Hardware is unequal
GPUs hash far faster than phones, and people can run optimized miners outside the browser. The weight cap limits what one wallet takes from a round, but anyone can split work across many wallets, so a large operator can still take most of a round.
- H-03
The deployer controls the program and the keeper
The program is upgradeable by its upgrade authority, the deployer, who can change any rule with an upgrade. Without an upgrade the deployer can still change d_min, the cap, the round length, the pot share (set to 90% for launch), the keeper wallet, and pause new rounds and submits. The keeper decides when fees are claimed and rounds open; if it stops, rounds stop settling. The program as written never pauses claims.
- H-04
Fees depend on trading
The pot is a share of real trading fees and nothing else. No trades means no fees and an empty pot. Nothing on this site predicts volume, earnings or the price of LODE, and the token can lose all of its value.
- H-05
Transactions cost SOL
Each submit pays a network fee, and your first submit pays rent for your Miner account. A submit can still fail on chain after simulating fine, for example when the round ends while it is in flight, and a failed transaction still pays its fee.
- H-06
Shares expire
A settled round is kept for 300 rounds, about five hours. A share that was not credited to your balance by then (by a later submit or a claim from your wallet) returns to the pot as carry. Credited balances do not expire.
- H-07
Software can fail
Bugs are possible in the program, the keeper, this site and your browser's GPU driver. The miner self-tests each engine against fixed vectors before using it, but nothing here is guaranteed.
Questions
Do I need to hold LODE to mine?
No. Any wallet can mine and there is no minimum holding. You need a little SOL for transaction fees.
Does the miner see my private key?
No. The miner only uses your public key, which is part of every hash. Your wallet signs each submit and claim, and shows you the transaction first.
Why does my wallet ask me to sign so often?
With submit set to auto, the miner sends a transaction each time your weight for the round improves, grouping bursts within 1.5 seconds. Set submit to manual to send only when you choose.
Can I mine on a phone?
Yes, on the WebAssembly engine. Use the low throttle, keep the screen on and the tab in front: browsers slow down background tabs.
What is carry?
Pot money waiting for a round with miners: deposits from rounds nobody mined, plus shares that expired unclaimed. The next round with miners receives all of it.
What does the keeper do?
Every minute it claims the pool's fees for the deployer, moves the pot share into the program's vault, settles the round that ended, and opens the next one with a fresh challenge. It can also push large balances to miners. It cannot mine.
Where is the contract address?
In the footer, once the LODE mint exists on chain. The site reads that on the server and does not show an address before then.
Is this an investment?
No. LODE shares trading fees with the people who do proof of work for each round. There is no promise of any return, and you can lose the SOL you spend on fees and power.