Cryptocurrency mining for people who always wanted to try it.
MINI is a low-power cryptocurrency network designed from the ground up for beginners, tinkerers and efficient hardware. Start with an ESP32, a Raspberry Pi, the CPU or GPU you already own, or build your own miner. Learn cryptocurrency by actually mining it.
Made for beginners. Open to everyone. Built for low power.
Why MINI Exists
MINI was created for people who have always wanted to mine cryptocurrency but did not know how, did not want expensive mining hardware, or did not want to turn large amounts of electricity into heat just to participate.
Low-power mining is not a secondary feature of MINI. It is the reason MINI exists.
A tiny miner should be able to sit on a desk, run from a battery, become a solar experiment, or simply blink every time it finds a share. As the participant learns, that first blinking miner becomes an introduction to shares, difficulty, pools, rewards, wallets, transactions, seed phrases, self-custody, nodes and blockchain infrastructure.
ESP32-class miners are part of the design center, not novelty devices added to a network built for giant computers.
ESP32, CPU, GPU, Raspberry Pi and other supported hardware are welcome. Public software and firmware require no hardware purchase.
Mine, earn, use wallets, send transactions, understand pools, operate nodes and learn the network through real participation.
Solar miners, battery experiments, custom boards, displays, Pi nodes, efficiency projects, community miners and software.
MiniPOW + Adaptive Difficulty
MINI uses MiniPOW1, a SHA-256-based proof-of-work algorithm with a 64 KiB per-attempt scratchpad and 512 state-dependent mixing rounds. The pool independently validates every submitted share.
Adaptive difficulty gives faster miners harder work and slower miners easier work. The current design targets roughly one accepted share every three seconds under calibrated operation. This keeps mining frequent and visible while preventing raw computing speed alone from simply dominating per-miner rewards.
MINI welcomes powerful computers. Official CPU and GPU miners are intended to run sensibly in the background rather than turning MINI into a race to consume the most electricity.
Free Software. Optional Hardware.
You do not need to buy a Mini Miner to participate. Public mining firmware and software will be released for supported hardware.
For beginners who want the simplest route, Mini Miners plans to offer ready-to-run ESP32 miners for approximately $20 cash, with a planned option of approximately $10 cash plus MINI earned through participation. Official hardware provides convenience, testing, preconfiguration, automatic updates and support - not privileged network access.
MINI LIVENET
MINI LIVENET is the public pre-blockchain network. It is both a working cryptocurrency learning environment and MINI's real-world proving ground before the independent blockchain launches.
LIVENET begins with mining and wallet functionality and expands toward common cryptocurrency operations including sending, receiving, person-to-person transfers, buying, selling and merchant use. Community members may build tools, applications or stores that accept MINI as those capabilities become available.
LIVENET also lets the project find the bugs that a small private test cannot: unusual hardware, unstable networks, attempted cheating, hostile traffic, scaling problems and real user mistakes.
Fair Growth Without a Permanent Miner Ceiling
Adaptive difficulty levels different hardware, but MINI must also discourage someone from launching hundreds of parallel virtual miner identities to multiply per-miner rewards.
A new verified LIVENET account starts with 2 miners. With at least 85% sustained qualifying activity, it may add five more each qualifying week: 2 -> 7 -> 12 -> 17 -> 22. A bad week never removes already-approved miners; it simply does not advance the account.
Every approved miner earns under the same MiniPOW, adaptive-difficulty and reward rules from its first share. MINI is designed to limit how quickly an operation can grow, not impose a permanent lifetime ceiling on legitimate mining.
From LIVENET to Mainnet
When MINI is ready to transition to its independent blockchain, LIVENET mining and transactions will freeze. The final LIVENET wallet balances become the basis of the Alpha Block, with legitimate balances intended to move 1:1 to Mainnet.
The frozen LIVENET will remain browsable in read-only form for a verification period. Participants can compare their final LIVENET wallet balance with their opening Mainnet balance. A downloadable final ledger/balance dataset and cryptographic hash are also planned for independent verification.
Low-Power Mainnet
MINI's low-power goal does not stop at mining. Raspberry Pi-class full-node operation is an explicit Mainnet design target. Multiple nodes and multiple pools should allow the network to operate without dependence on one founder-controlled server or physical location.
Mainnet consensus, final supply/emission policy, block timing, staking/masternode design and final node resource limits remain engineering decisions to be specified and tested rather than invented in advance.
Education Is a Permanent MINI Feature
MINI is intended to be a functioning cryptocurrency with an economy, utility, merchant activity and an independent blockchain - not an educational simulation. The project hopes to develop sufficient adoption, liquidity and infrastructure to pursue cryptocurrency exchange listings in the future, although listing and future market value cannot be guaranteed.
The educational mission continues on Mainnet. Someone can begin by watching a tiny miner blink when it finds a share and eventually understand mining, wallets, transactions, self-custody, pools, nodes and the blockchain behind that blinking light. That knowledge also gives them the foundation to understand and explore other cryptocurrency systems.