Windows: a node and a miner you can download and verify
This release adds Windows. Two archives, signed like the Linux ones, with
no WSL and no Linux needed: the node, and the miner.
Consensus is unchanged from v0.1.7. No node has to upgrade, and nothing
here can fork a node that does not. If you run Linux and everything works,
there is nothing in this release for you.
WHY IT MATTERS ANYWAY
WAM uses RandomX so that an ordinary desktop processor can compete for
blocks, and most ordinary desktop processors are inside Windows machines.
The node has cross-compiled since 7 September and every platform-build run
has proved it agrees with the chain -- but the miner had never been built
for Windows at all, so a Windows user could hold a wallet and not take part
in the proof of work. That was the wrong half to be missing.
WHAT WAS MEASURED, ON WINDOWS 11
--self-test SHA-256, stratum byte order, difficulty targets, and
RandomX against both official test vectors
connected pool.wamcoin.org, subscribed, authorized
1.88 kH/s 8 of 24 cores, 2 GiB dataset built in 5.5 s
shares 10 accepted, 0 rejected
block 8478 solved by the Windows binary, accepted, and paid
Zero rejected shares is the number that matters: a single byte-order
mistake in the header, the nonce or the target comparison gives all
rejected and no error message.
The node archive was also unpacked on a Windows runner and synced the test
chain from the genesis block over the real peer-to-peer protocol, agreeing
with the Linux nodes at heights 0, 1, 5000 and 6000 -- block 1 included,
where the 5% treasury rule is first enforced. The bytes that did that are
the bytes in the archive, not an earlier build of them.
YOUR ANTIVIRUS WILL PROBABLY OBJECT TO THE MINER
It is a false positive and we would rather you heard it from us. Windows
Defender deleted wam-miner.exe fourteen seconds into its first run and
called it Trojan:Win32/Bearfoos.A!ml.
A program that opens a network connection and then uses every processor
core behaves exactly like the cryptojacking malware that infects people
without asking. No scanner can tell them apart by behaviour, because the
behaviour is identical; the difference is that you chose this one, and it
mines to the address on its own command line and nowhere else. A publisher
certificate is the only thing that removes the warning and this project
does not have one.
So verify the file instead of trusting a verdict -- the SHA256 list is
signed with a key kept offline, and its fingerprint is in SECURITY.md. If
you want to mine, allow that one file by name in your antivirus, never a
folder and never the whole machine. If you would rather not, the node is a
separate archive, is not a miner, and is not normally flagged.
Anyone claiming to be us and telling you to switch your antivirus off
entirely is not us.
docs/MINE.md has the seven lines for Windows, and the warning in full.
ALSO
* the Linux archives are unchanged in behaviour; the miner was
refactored so one source builds for both platforms, and its socket
error reporting on Linux is now read before freeaddrinfo() can
overwrite it
* mainnet is still 15 September 2026, 00:00 UTC
* macOS builds and passes the consensus gate on every run, and is still
not a signed download. It is next, and docs/ROADMAP.md section 7 says
what is missing