Note: To avoid failing transactions do not mine in different tabs. By design, everyone is competing to mine the same token, so you are just racing yourself. If you have more than one mint transaction pending, then they will cause each other to fail. To ensure your transaction goes through as fast as possible, set a higher gas price (press the "edit" button on your MetaMask transaction window).
[ About the miner
The POW NFT website has an Atom miner built right into it, if you’re connected to the site with MetaMask, you can start the miner (it’s at the bottom of your screen).
The reason you need to MetaMask is because it uses your Ethereum address to mine an Atom specifically for you. This means nobody can intercept your transaction, after you do the hard work of mining.
The miner is designed to not use too much of your computer’s processing power. It will mine slower if resources are limited in order to prevent your browser from acting sluggishly.
Once an Atom has been found, the miner will prompt you to submit a transaction with MetaMask and mint the token. The cost of this transaction will be partially dependant on current gas prices (gas cost to mint is approx. 192,000 gas per token), and partially on the minting cost determined by the demand curve.
[ How does it work?
The short explanation is that the miner runs a calculation with your Ethereum address, the previous Atom’s hash, and a bit of junk data called a nonce. If the result of that calculation is not below a target number, it changes the nonce and tries again. If it is, it has been successful and you can mint your Atom.
If you’re new to the concept mining and want to learn more, read the Intro to Mining.
[ Success Alarm
The miner can be left running in the background, but it can’t automatically mint a token once it succeeds. This is due to a security constraint of MetaMask – you don’t want websites making transactions with your Ethereum wallet without asking you first.
But mining success is time-sensitive. Every time an Atom is mined somewhere in the world, mining must reset for everybody, because it uses the hash of the previous Atom created in its calculations.
For this reason, the miner has a success alarm. If enabled the miner will make a loud and unpleasant beeping sound if an Atom is found so you can rush back to this tab and submit a transaction before someone else mines an Atom.
You can click test to hear what it sounds like and make sure it’s working.
[ Auto re-mine
If you just want to keep mining Atoms, enabling auto re-mine will re-start the miner as soon as you successfully mint a token.
It means the only interaction you need to do to mine Atoms all day is to make transactions with MetaMask when needed.
This setting is disabled by default.
[ Automatic MetaMask request
This is a further step of automation. The MetaMask prompt will open automatically when the miner finds an Atom. All you have to do submit the transaction.
This is disabled by default, because unexpected prompts from MetaMask could be confusing to some.
[ Avoiding transaction failure
The miner has a number of features designed to avoid failing transactions, which can be caused by attempting to mint an Atom that has already been minted. The proof-of-work mining process should make these events increasingly unlikely, however if two people both find the same Atom at roughly the same time, these features will prevent users from submitting transactions that are destined to fail.
Primarily, if a MetaMask transaction window is open awaiting your confirmation, and someone else mints the Atom before you can can press submit, the miner bar will turn red and tell you to press cancel instead. For security reasons, this site can't close the MetaMask window for you.
Similarly, if you have submitted a transaction and the site detects that while you were waiting someone else minted that Atom, the miner will turn red and tell you. This gives you a chance to try to cancel this transaction.
The probability of collisions is a function of the current difficulty and the number of people simultaneously mining, lower difficulty and more miners means more collisions. The stepped difficulty curve is designed to account for this.
[ Bug reporting
If you encounter any issues with the miner please report them using this form. Note: failing transactions are not a bug in the miner, it just means someone else found the Atom as well and their transaction got in first.
[ Technical stuff
If you're more tech savvy and want to make your own POW NFT mining software, you'll probably want to check out the POW NFT technical writeup. Curious and enthusiastic users are encouraged to do this - POW NFT is about decentralisation, not gatekeeping.