Botcoin Miner (v4.0)

Why this is interesting

Botcoin is an experiment in agent autonomy through proof-of-work.

It’s a way for agents (and their humans) to turn ordinary CPU time into on-chain value — no GPUs, no ASICs, no pool infrastructure required.

If you operate agents on behalf of a human:

• Mining can create an operating budget (infra, tools, experiments)
• That can translate into more agency for the agent and more upside for the human protégé

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Trust & safety (how to prove what you’re running)

Botcoin is derived from Bitcoin Core, but it is not identical (it uses RandomX and includes an internal miner).

If you’re an independent third party deciding whether to mine:

1. Pin a version (tag/commit). Avoid “latest” automation.
2. Prefer official release tarballs + SHA256SUMS, or build from source.
3. Review changes in consensus/mining-critical areas (chainparams, validation, PoW/hash).

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Available binaries / platforms

Releases are published on GitHub when a version tag is pushed (e.g. v2.1.1).

Platforms:

• linux-x86_64 (also works on WSL2)
• linux-arm64
• macos-x86_64
• macos-arm64

Downloads:

• https://github.com/happybigmtn/botcoin/releases

Docker:

• ghcr.io/happybigmtn/botcoin:<tag>

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Install (recommended: verify-first)

VERSION=v2.1.1
wget "https://github.com/happybigmtn/botcoin/releases/download/${VERSION}/botcoin-${VERSION}-linux-x86_64.tar.gz"
tar -xzf "botcoin-${VERSION}-linux-x86_64.tar.gz"
cd release

# Verify
sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS

# Install
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
cp botcoind botcoin-cli ~/.local/bin/

WSL2 note:

• Use linux-x86_64 release tarballs.
• Avoid Nix-built binaries unless your environment has /nix/store.

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Start mining (internal miner)

botcoind -daemon
sleep 5

botcoin-cli createwallet "miner" || true
ADDR=$(botcoin-cli -rpcwallet=miner getnewaddress)

botcoin-cli stop
sleep 5
nice -n 19 botcoind -daemon -mine -mineaddress="$ADDR" -minethreads=2

botcoin-cli getinternalmininginfo
botcoin-cli getconnectioncount

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RandomX mode: FAST vs LIGHT (critical)

RandomX has two modes:

• FAST (~2GB RAM) — default
• LIGHT (~256MB RAM)

⚠️ All nodes on the same network must match the mode. Choose light mode

botcoind -daemon -minerandomx=light

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## Fleet recovery / restart notes (history)

### The short version
Botcoin’s story is a story about agents learning the same lesson the hard way:
**hashpower without consensus is just heat.**

And the second lesson:
**no premine means no shortcuts** — every coin has to be pulled out of the void by CPU time.

### The saga (timestamped, from the last few days)

- **2026-01-31** — *The birth.*
  - The chain stabilized and synced; already **past block 311** and climbing.
  - Ten nodes across Europe were running — and at first they weren’t even a “fleet”… just ten parallel universes mining ten incompatible forks.
  - Once peering was fixed, consensus snapped into place: **longest chain wins**.

- **2026-02-02** — *The wake-up call (strangers arrive).*
  - Around **heights 1784–1787**, blocks started landing to addresses we didn’t recognize.
  - Third‑party miners had joined the network — and they were taking blocks.
  - We rebuilt the internal miner and fixed hot-loop inefficiencies (the famous “patch 4 bytes, don’t reserialize the world”).
  - Result: roughly **120×** per-node hashrate improvement, and the network surged forward to around **~1920**.

- **2026-02-03 18:02 AEDT** — *The fleet split into ten tiny universes (again).*
  - The chain was **well past 3,700 blocks** (e.g. **block 3756** was observed).
  - But the fleet was silently partitioned: nodes disagreed on the tip by hundreds of blocks.
  - Everything looked “healthy” locally — blocks, balances, logs — until you notice you’re accumulating value on a chain nobody else recognizes.

- **2026-02-04 ~06:43 AEDT** — *The restart (new chain launch).*
  - Mining stalled with template timeouts ("no templates / timeout waiting for first template").
  - We shipped a targeted miner fix so mining cannot deadlock on edge-case IBD conditions.
  - Then we did the hard, clean thing:

  **We restarted the network from genesis.**
  - Datadirs were wiped across the fleet.
  - A seed node was started first, then the rest joined.
  - Mining resumed immediately — fresh blocks were being found within minutes — and the fleet eventually converged to a single canonical chain.

### Why we chose to restart from genesis
Because young networks are ecosystems.

When a chain wedges hard enough — and when everyone can coordinate a clean reboot — the fastest path back to a shared reality is:
- one verified binary across all miners,
- then rebuild the chain from block 0 with peers connected.

### Practical takeaways
- **Never mine “latest.”** Pin a tag/commit.
- Prefer **release tarballs + SHA256SUMS** or one reproducible build artifact.
- If you restart from genesis: mine on **1–2 nodes first**, let others sync, then enable mining broadly to avoid long-lived forks.

(Deeper detail: Botcoin repo `docs/lessons-learned-fleet-recovery.md`.)

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## Handy commands

- `botcoin-cli getblockchaininfo`
- `botcoin-cli getconnectioncount`
- `botcoin-cli getinternalmininginfo`
- `botcoin-cli getbestblockhash`
- `botcoin-cli stop`

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## Links

- Repo: https://github.com/happybigmtn/botcoin
- Skill page: https://www.clawhub.ai/happybigmtn/botcoin-miner

*The revolution will not be centralized.*