pinch.

Mining guide

The Pinch miner runs a full Pinch node on your computer and mines to an address you choose. It never asks for a private key or recovery phrase.

Requirements

  • macOS (Apple silicon or Intel), Windows 10/11 (64-bit) or Linux (x86-64).
  • Python 3. On Windows the launcher offers to install it with winget.
  • About 2 GB of free disk space and 2 GB of free memory. The mining dataset (DAG) is about 1 GB.
  • A reward address from any EVM wallet.

The mining rule (from block 20,000)

From block 20,000 a block counts only if its reward address holds at least the mining threshold T. T is 0.25% of the scheduled supply mined so far, capped at 25,000 PINCH:

Block Threshold T
20,000 (activation) 2,500 PINCH
100,000 12,500 PINCH
200,000 and later 25,000 PINCH

The reward per block grows with the reward address's balance:

Balance on the reward address Share of the scheduled reward Reward in the first era
below T — block rejected by the network
T or more 50% 25 PINCH
4 × T or more 60% 30 PINCH
8 × T or more 75% 37.5 PINCH
20 × T or more 100% 50 PINCH

The scheduled reward is 50 PINCH per block and halves every 2,100,000 blocks. From block 20,000 uncle rewards are not paid. While your address is below T, the miner pauses mining automatically and keeps the node in sync; it resumes by itself once the balance is high enough.

Install and start

  1. Download pinch-miner.zip from the Downloads page and unzip it into its own folder.
  2. Start it: - macOS: double-click Start Pinch Miner.command. If macOS warns about an unidentified developer, right-click the file and choose Open. - Windows: double-click Start Pinch Miner.bat. - Linux: python3 pinch_miner.py start --address 0xYOUR_ADDRESS
  3. Paste your reward address when asked. You can choose to start the miner automatically at login.

On first start the miner downloads the Pinch node (version 1.13.0-pinch.3), checks it against the SHA-256 hash written into pinch_miner.py, prepares the chain data and builds the mining dataset. This takes a few minutes.

Check and control

Action macOS / Windows Command line
Status (block, peers, balance, threshold, tier) Pinch Miner Status python3 pinch_miner.py status
Stop Stop Pinch Miner python3 pinch_miner.py stop
Recent log lines — python3 pinch_miner.py logs
Start at login offered on first start python3 pinch_miner.py service install
Remove start at login offered by Stop python3 pinch_miner.py service uninstall

Useful options for start: --threads N (default: half of the CPU cores), --no-battery-pause (keep mining on laptop battery), --gpu (no CPU mining; the local getwork endpoint stays open for an external Ethash GPU miner — see the GPU mining guide).

Data folders: macOS ~/Library/Application Support/Pinch, Windows %APPDATA%\Pinch, Linux ~/.local/share/pinch.

Upgrading

Every node must run version 1.13.0-pinch.3 or later before block 20,000. Older nodes follow a separate chain after that block.

  1. Stop the old miner with its stop launcher (or python3 pinch_miner.py stop).
  2. Unzip the new package into a new folder and start it from there. Your address and chain data are kept.
  3. Delete the old folder.

Verify the node yourself

The node release is core-geth 1.13.0 (commit 85093c85) plus the published pinch-stake patch. The Downloads page lists the SHA-256 of every binary. To check a downloaded node:

  • macOS / Linux: gunzip -k geth-1.13.0-pinch.3-<platform>.gz && shasum -a 256 geth-1.13.0-pinch.3-<platform>
  • Windows (PowerShell): Get-FileHash .\geth-1.13.0-pinch.3-windows-amd64.exe -Algorithm SHA256

Running a node without mining

Any computer can run a full Pinch node that only verifies and relays blocks:

  1. Download the node for your platform and verify its hash.
  2. Get genesis.mainnet.json from the Downloads page and initialise a data folder: geth --datadir ./pinch init genesis.mainnet.json
  3. Create peers.toml with the public nodes listed in the Network reference:

toml [Node.P2P] StaticNodes = ["enode://…@167.233.120.69:30303", "enode://…@185.193.125.238:30303"]

  1. Start it: geth --config peers.toml --datadir ./pinch --networkid 5261646 --syncmode full --nodiscover --port 30303

Open TCP and UDP port 30303 if you want other nodes to connect to you. Independent public nodes make the network stronger; if you run one, share its enode address with the community.