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The proving budget
Gas prices execution. Proving cost is a different number, so Igneum meters it separately: every transaction pays in both dimensions, and each block has a proving-cost budget set in consensus from measured prover throughput. A transaction that is cheap to run and expensive to prove pays for what it costs the provers. Measured on 5 October 2026 (an RTX 5090 under SP1 6.8.1's GPU prover, the shard size the chain adopts from its fee switch, 30,000 proving gas, about 4.7 million prover cycles): one full shard proves in 4.3 seconds and needs 20.4 GB of GPU memory with the card to itself, so a 24 GB card proves full shards and a 12 GB or 16 GB card does not on this prover build, whose floor is 13.9 GB for even an empty shard; mining and proving on one card needs 32 GB today (the prototype-size shard beside the miner peaked at 30.1 GB) and 24 GB once the adopted shard size is live (22.2 GB beside the miner, 13.2 seconds a shard, measured on the 32 GB card; a 24 GB card has not run it yet). The old 12 GB gate on the roadmap was withdrawn on 5 October until a prover build with a smaller floor was measured; on 6 October a patched server proved the same shard at 7.4 to 8.0 GB alone on eleven rented cards from the RTX 3060 to the RTX 5090 (the real-card table), so the gate returns as measured and the patched server is not yet in the shipped app. The first proofs exist: on 4 October 2026 an RTX 5090 proved a small two-transaction block in 1.4 seconds (2.7 seconds compressed), verified in 0.22 and 0.038 seconds, and a laptop CPU proved a three-shard block end to end in 19 minutes. Later that day the same card proved a full shard at the provisional size, 6.75 million prover gas, which executed in 60.8 million cycles: core proof 8.3 seconds, compressed proof 10.9 seconds, verified in 0.040 seconds; a four-shard block took 44.5 seconds of GPU stages end to end. Since 5 October 2026 shards are assigned and proven on the live devnet. The gate asks for a mid-range card, and an RTX 5090 is not one, so the gate stands open. Once the gate is measured, the budget rises by schedule as hardware improves. The proof system is hash-based, which is what runs on consumer cards, and sits behind a versioned interface, so Igneum can adopt a better proof system when one exists by a miner-signalled release, and runs for ever on the current one if none is adopted.
Proving for everyone else
- The same miners accept proving jobs from other chains. Rollups post a job, a miner wins it, proves it, and is paid. The job market is permissionless and is Designed, not yet built. At launch a job is paid on the customer's own chain, in the customer's currency, to a payout contract keyed by miner address, because Igneum cannot yet see Ethereum. Settlement in IGN, with 10% of each fee burned, follows when the proof bridge lets Igneum see the payment, in phase two. The Igneum miner client can also bid on other proving networks and take the best price, where a miner chooses to hold their collateral: Boundless provers post ZKC and Succinct provers stake PROVE (approximate, from their documentation). The proving market is small today. Igneum does not depend on it. We know of no other proof-of-work chain selling proofs to other chains.
+ The same miners accept proving jobs from other chains. Rollups post a job, a miner wins it, proves it, and is paid. The job market is permissionless and is Designed, not yet built. At launch a job is paid on the customer's own chain, in the customer's currency, to a payout contract keyed by miner address, because Igneum cannot yet see Ethereum. Settlement in IGN, with 10% of each fee burned, follows when the proof bridge lets Igneum see the payment, in phase two. The Igneum miner client can also bid on other proving networks and take the best price, where a miner chooses to hold their collateral: Boundless provers post ZKC and Succinct provers stake PROVE (approximate, from their documentation). The proving market is small today. Igneum does not depend on it. We know of no other proof-of-work chain selling proofs to other chains. Live rows arrive with the public testnet. The public testnet is weeks away: three seed nodes and the public RPC are up, and it opens when the go checklist closes.
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The protocol carries no fee: no dev fund, no cut to any team. Ember, the miner software, takes an optional 1% dev fee, the way other GPU miners do. One block template in 100 is requested with the dev address instead of yours, by a counter, not a random draw, so it is exactly 1 in 100 and anyone can check it from the source or from the chain. One flag turns it off (--dev-fee 0, a switch in the app, a line in the HiveOS config). The miner prints the fee and the address when it starts. Any other client is welcome.
One click, for everyone else
Farm operators get a HiveOS package. Everyone else gets Igneum Ember: install it on Windows, macOS or Linux, press Start, and the card is mining to a key the app made for you. It is the same client with a face on it. Implemented, Ember 0.3.9 (5 October 2026): the app shows the key once and has you save it before mining starts, or takes an address you already have; the dashboard shows each card's hash rate, blocks found and accepted by the node, the node's height and peers, the next hourly program, the finality votes sent, and a proving tile with shards assigned, submitted and paid and the verifier state; the chain label reads devnet v4 and the welcome screen says nothing is bought or sold; NVIDIA cards are capped at 80% of their default power limit for stability, with a sweep that looks for the best hash per watt, not yet measured on a card; proving the shards the chain assigns is a switch in Settings (proving v0), beside the 1% dev fee switch, finality voting, and signed updates that install themselves at a quiet moment with a switch to turn that off. It shows no earnings in IGN or in any currency, and it has no hardware-wallet path. Roadmap, Designed and not in the app: earnings per block in IGN with the network named, a figure in your currency, mining paused while you game, and a hardware wallet for your key. Ember is downloaded only from this domain, with the version and size on the button and the hash in the signed manifest the app checks. The next section says what is shipped and what is still a design. Nobody from Igneum will ever ask for your seed. Mining never runs in a browser, because browser compute is slow and browser mining has meant malware since Coinhive. The browser is for the dashboard, and for verifying the chain.
+ Testnet terms
+ No value. Testnet IGN cannot be sold, bought or redeemed, now or at mainnet. There is no airdrop, no points scheme and no promise tied to testnet balances. Mainnet starts from an empty genesis.
+ Resets. The chain restarts from a fresh genesis when a consensus rule changes. Every reset is announced at least seven days ahead on the site and in the app. Balances, contracts and history do not carry over. The devnet that runs today resets without notice.
+ What the app sends home. The app version, a random machine id made at install, your operating system, the node version, the hash rate, and the app, node and miner logs (which name the address the card mines to). They go to the project's log intake, a service Igneum runs on its host, and are read by the maintainers to find faults. Never your seed phrase, never a key, never a file you did not make with the app. Nothing is sold or shared.
+ Wallet set-up for MetaMask: chain id, RPC and the one-click button. The miner software takes an optional 1% fee, off with one flag; the protocol carries no fee to anyone.
Fair launch, announced
Launch date and miner software published a month ahead. Pools live on testnet. HiveOS support on day one. The founders mine from genesis like everyone else, with disclosed addresses and the same software. Nobody has coins before block one. The first 30 days of mainnet run on proof of work alone, with no locked checkpoint, while vote weights build; anyone crediting deposits in that month should treat Igneum as plain proof of work with a 12-hour depth.
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| 2. Prove the proving | Nov 2026 to Jan 2027 | Mining program prototype on GPU and CPU, shard proving benchmark on consumer cards. So far: an RTX 5090 proves a shard in 10.9 s compressed; a CPU verifies a warp in 0.61 ms (class v2) to 2.1 ms (class v3). A mid-range card has not been measured | A mid-range GPU proves a shard in under 20 s and a CPU verifies a hash in 10 ms |
| 3. Devnet | Started 3 Oct 2026, 20 nodes by Mar 2027 | BlockDAG node with the new mining program and EVM execution, 20 nodes. Live now: 1 block a second, difficulty v2, finality v2 locks, proving v0, Ember on every machine. Measured on the live chain on 6 October 2026: proofs land a median of about 380 s behind the tip (the observer, /live), against the 60 s gate | 1 block a second held with proofs under 60 s behind the tip |
| 4. Finality and job market | Apr to Jul 2027 | Sustained-mining finality, external proving jobs, miner client with auto-switching | Finality design passes external review and one rollup signs for testnet |
- | 5. Public testnet | Aug to Oct 2027 | One-click miner app on Windows, macOS and Linux, HiveOS, pools, the first rollup as a proving customer, no coin yet | 1,000 independent miners run 30 days and rollup proofs are delivered on time |
+ | 5. Public testnet | Weeks away: when the go checklist closes | One-click miner app on Windows, macOS and Linux, HiveOS, pools, the first rollup as a proving customer, no coin yet | 1,000 independent miners run 30 days and rollup proofs are delivered on time |
| 6. Mainnet fair launch | Nov 2027 | Genesis with no premine, 30-day ramp. No listing is arranged, promised or sought by the project | |