SWARM mainnet is live · run a node, mine a block, send a shielded payment.
HomeMining
Mainnet · live
SWARM’s proof of work is Equihash 200,9, inherited unchanged, and the chain started at minimum difficulty. There is no pool and no account: your machine looks for blocks, and the protocol pays whoever finds one straight to an address you chose. One app does all of it, and it only ever runs while you have pressed Start.
How it works
Mining is a race to find a valid next block. Every machine on the network is working on the same problem; the first to solve it publishes the block, everyone else verifies it and starts on the next one. Nothing is shared out and nothing is owed to you — the reward belongs to the block you found.
The proof of work is inherited unchanged. The chain started at minimum difficulty, so an ordinary computer can find blocks from the first one. Nothing in the rules keeps larger miners out later, and we do not pretend otherwise.
A block pays 6.25 SWM in the first era, and the miner’s share is 80%. So a block you find pays you 5.00 SWM plus that block’s transaction fees. The other 20% goes to the three project funds, block by block, in public.
A transparent mining reward needs 100 confirmations — about two hours at target spacing — before it can be spent. That rule is inherited and it applies to every miner equally. Shielded rewards have no coinbase maturity countdown; your wallet tells you what is spendable.
The target is a block every 75 seconds. Difficulty is recomputed at every block from a 17-block mean and 11-block median times, damped and bounded to roughly +16% / −32% per block, so it follows the hash power on the network instead of waiting for a fortnightly reset.
Whichever machine finds the next valid block first gets that block’s full reward, paid by the protocol straight to your payout address. A machine that just started can win several blocks in a row — that is luck on a small number of blocks, not a preference. Over time every miner earns in proportion to its share of the network’s total hash power.
That is the same sentence SWARM Node prints on its own Mining screen. There is no pool protocol yet, no payout smoothing and no minimum withdrawal, because there is nothing to withdraw: the protocol pays the address you pasted.
The network right now
Read live from the seed server’s public status file. These are the only network-wide figures the project publishes, and they are the same ones your own node will report once it has caught up.
Live figures load from the seed server. With JavaScript off, or if the seed cannot be reached, the dashes stay — the page never guesses a number.
No projections, here or in the app. We do not publish an expected-earnings calculator, a per-day figure or a fiat value, because any such number would be an invention: it depends on hash power that changes block by block. What you can check is the arithmetic — your share of the network’s hash power is your expected share of the blocks. SWARM Node’s Node screen shows Network hash rate and Difficulty as measured by your own node, with the caveat the app prints itself: a dash means it has not measured that yet, and the hash rate needs a few blocks before it means anything.
Step by step
One app is all of it: SWARM Node is a full node and a miner together. It never mines without you pressing the button, and closing the window stops everything.
SWARM Node
Windows installer or portable zip; Debian/Ubuntu .deb or a portable AppImage for Linux. Check the SHA-256 on the download page before you install.
No build is code-signed yet. Windows SmartScreen will warn you: More info → Run anyway. macOS blocks the first open: right-click the app in Applications and choose Open. Both are expected, and the SHA-256 is what actually tells you the file is the published one.
Get SWARM NodeFirst run
On first run the app asks you to tick, one line at a time, exactly what it is about to do: run a full node, use your CPU only while you have pressed Start, store nothing about you but a payout address, and stop completely when you close it.
It then checks this machine and prints what it found: processor, memory, free disk, and whether port 28233 is free. It never uploads any of that.
Payout
Open SWARM Wallet, copy a receive address, paste it in. The app checks the format offline and then asks your own node to confirm it. The protocol pays rewards straight to that address — SWARM Node never holds your coins, so there is nothing to withdraw later.
Which address you paste decides how you mine. That is the next section.
Get SWARM WalletMining
One button. It starts your node, waits for it to catch up, and begins mining on its own. The line under the button says where it has got to, and the same button stops it again.
It will hold back until your node has at least one peer and is level with the network — mining on a node that cannot see the network builds a private fork that everybody else throws away. Press it and walk away; mining begins by itself.
Honey
Every block this machine finds appears there the moment the network accepts it, with its height, whether it was paid transparently or shielded, and how many confirmations it still needs.
There is nothing to claim. Open your wallet to spend it.
The installer for SWARM mainnet starts on SWARM Mainnet by itself, on a fresh machine or over an old testnet install. The band across the top of every screen says which chain you are on: SwarmMainnet · SWARM mainnet · chain swarm-mainnet · genesis 01c34428… — and Settings → Network has the full genesis, the ports and the switcher. If that band ever says anything else, stop and check Verify.
The one real choice
SWARM Node has two mining engines, and the address you paste decides which one you get. Both pay you directly; neither is a pool. The app states the trade-off on the Mining screen under How you mine, and it is worth understanding before you paste.
Shielded · 1 core
A unified address. Rewards paid to it are private. It works with shielded mining, which runs on one core inside the node and pays into your unified address where nobody can see the amount.
Slower, because it is one core. There is no coinbase maturity countdown on a shielded reward, and the app cannot read the amount either — your wallet is what tells you the balance.
Standard · many cores
A transparent address. Rewards paid to it are visible on the explorer. It works with standard mining, which uses as many processor cores as you choose.
Faster, because it is every core you allow. Anyone can see what that address has been paid, and a transparent reward needs 100 confirmations before it can be spent.
You cannot have both at once, and the app will not pretend you can: it greys out whichever engine your address does not fit and says why. Change your mind by pasting the other kind of address in Settings. Switching shielded mining on or off restarts the node, because that is the only moment the node reads that setting. Mainnet payout addresses start s1… or swm1…; a testnet address, or an upstream Zcash address, is refused before your node is even asked. See the address prefixes.
What the screens show
Every figure on the Mining screen comes from the chain, from the miner’s own output, or from this machine. Anything unknown renders as a dash rather than a zero.
| Tile | What it is | What it is not |
|---|---|---|
| Hash rate | Solutions per second from your own machine, in Sol/s, measured by the solver that is actually running. | Not the network’s rate, and not an estimate. A dash means nothing has reported a rate yet. |
| Blocks found | Blocks this machine found and the network accepted, split into transparent and shielded once both exist. | Not your wallet history, and not blocks found by your other machines. |
| Mature rewards | Mining income past 100 confirmations. On a shielded payout the tile is called Shielded subsidy instead. | Not your wallet balance. The app never holds coins and cannot see what else is in your wallet. |
| Honey maturing | Rewards still counting down, with the number of blocks until the next one unlocks. | Not applicable to shielded rewards, which have no coinbase maturity rule. |
The Node screen adds the chain-wide view: block height, newest block, peers, disk used, and — once your node has measured them — Network hash rate and Difficulty. The Log screen shows every line tagged node, miner or app, so you can see which part of the system said what.
Living with it
The core slider reads How many cores to use, and the maximum it offers is one fewer than your machine has: one core is always left free so the machine stays usable. Turn it down further any time; it takes effect without a restart.
There is a switch labelled Pause while I am using this machine (starts again after two minutes of no keyboard or mouse). With it on, the miner steps aside the moment you touch the machine and picks up again two minutes after you stop.
Mining runs your processor at full load for as long as it is on. That means heat, fan noise and a real electricity bill. On a laptop, expect it to get hot and to drain on battery. Nothing about SWARM makes that cheaper, and we will not tell you it pays for itself.
Run SWARM Node on as many machines as you like, each with its own full node, and point them all at the same payout address if you want the rewards in one place. They do not need to know about each other — they are simply more of the swarm.
Each machine keeps its own copy of the chain, so budget the disk on each of them.
The .deb installs on Debian and Ubuntu; the AppImage runs anywhere without installing — mark it executable and run it. Both are built from the same commit as the Windows package and carry their own SHA-256.
Stated plainly: the Linux packages have not been run on a Linux machine by the project. Same source, same pipeline as Windows; nothing more is claimed.
Disk image or portable zip, for Apple silicon and for Intel, each with its SHA-256. These builds are not code-signed, so the first open is blocked: right-click SWARM Node in Applications and choose Open, or run xattr -d com.apple.quarantine on it in Terminal.
Signing and notarization happen on the owner’s Mac, never in CI. A signed build follows, and it is on the roadmap as in development.
Questions
Because finding a block is a lottery draw, not a queue. Every attempt is independent, so the gaps between blocks follow a random distribution around the 75-second target: several in a minute, then a long quiet stretch, is exactly what that looks like. It is not a fault and it is not the network favouring anyone.
Difficulty only recalculates when a block arrives, and it is bounded to roughly +16% / −32% per block. So when a large miner leaves, the first blocks at the raised difficulty genuinely do take a long time, and recovery is measured in slow blocks rather than in minutes.
Because a block at the tip of the chain can still be replaced. If a competing chain turns out to have more work behind it, the block you found — and its reward — goes away with it. The 100-block wait means a coinbase reward cannot be spent until it is buried deep enough that reversing it is impractical, which protects whoever you would have paid with it.
It is an inherited rule and it applies to every miner equally. Shielded rewards have no coinbase maturity countdown; your wallet shows what is spendable.
Because nobody has built one for SWARM yet. A pool needs a protocol for handing out work, a way of measuring each miner’s contribution and an operator who takes custody of rewards before paying them out — and that last part is exactly the kind of thing we want reviewed before it exists, not bolted on.
A pool protocol is on the roadmap as planned, with no date. Until then every miner is solo: whoever finds the block keeps it, and the protocol pays your address directly.
Both, honestly. A small network means your machine is a large share of the total hash power, so you find blocks far more often than you would on an established chain. It also means the chain has less accumulated work behind it, fewer nodes checking it, and a single large miner arriving would change your share overnight.
Equihash hardware already exists and hash power for it can be rented. A single current-generation ASIC out-hashes thousands of home PCs, so from the moment one joins, home mining stops being competitive at the difficulty it sets. That is a consequence of keeping the rules open rather than inventing a hardware gate, and we would rather write it here than let you discover it.
Your share of the network’s hash power is your expected share of the blocks, and each block you find pays 5.00 SWM plus that block’s fees. We will not turn that into a number for you: it depends on hash power that changes block by block, on your electricity price, and on a market price that SWARM does not set, promise or have any say in.
SWM can lose value, including all of it. Mine because you want to run a piece of the network, not because a website told you what it pays.
The app tells you, in one line under the button. The usual reasons: your node is still downloading the chain; it has no peers yet, so it cannot tell whether it is on the real chain; or there is no payout address saved. In every case the button stays pressable — press it and mining starts by itself the moment the node is ready.
If it has been waiting far longer than it should, the app offers Start anyway beside the main button and explains the risk: your node may not be on the network’s best chain, and blocks you find could be discarded.
No. Mining starts when you press Start and stops when you press Stop, when you close the window, or when the node loses the network. There is no silent mode, no background service and no setting that starts it at boot. Closing the window stops the node and the miner too.
