Download the Malairte node, run it with --mine, and it starts CPU mining once your chain is synced. Add --gpu to use your graphics card as well. If you do not supply a mining key the node generates one for you — back it up, because it controls your rewards. A full walkthrough with the exact commands, the safety checks, and the failure modes is below.

What you need before you start

  • A 64-bit computer. Any modern CPU works. There is no minimum hashrate to take part.
  • Disk space for the blockchain, which grows over time.
  • A stable internet connection. Mining is not bandwidth-heavy, but a dropped connection costs you work.
  • Optionally a GPU. The standard build uses OpenCL and falls back to CPU-only if it finds no usable device. A separate CUDA build is published for NVIDIA cards.

You do not need to buy anything. If you had to buy hardware to make this work, the economics would almost certainly not justify it — see is CPU mining dead in 2026? for the honest version of that argument.

Step 1 — Get the software

Downloads are on the downloads page. For Windows there is an installer (malairte-installer.exe) that sets things up in one go, plus standalone builds if you prefer to run the binary yourself:

  • malairte-node-windows-amd64.exe — the standard node, with OpenCL GPU support.
  • malairte-node-windows-amd64-cuda.exe — the CUDA build, for NVIDIA cards.
  • malairte-cli-windows-amd64.exe — the command-line tool for querying your node.

Verify the checksum against the published release notes before running anything. This is a habit worth keeping for every piece of crypto software you ever download, not just ours.

Step 2 — Create and back up a mining key

Your mining rewards are paid to a key you control. Generate one:

malairte-cli genkey

That prints a private key and its addresses. Save the private key somewhere offline before you go any further. Whoever holds it holds the coins, and nobody — including us — can recover it for you.

If you skip this step and start the node without --miner-key, it generates a key for you. That works, but you then have a key you have not deliberately backed up, which is a bad position to be in once it holds anything.

Step 3 — Start mining

CPU only:

malairte-node --mine --miner-key=<your-hex-private-key>

CPU and GPU together:

malairte-node --mine --gpu --miner-key=<your-hex-private-key>

The node syncs the chain first, then starts the miner. That ordering is deliberate: --sync-before-mine defaults to true so a fresh install cannot sit there mining an orphan fork on top of the genesis block while it is still catching up. It waits up to five minutes by default (--sync-wait-timeout). Leave this alone unless you know exactly why you are changing it.

Step 4 — Choose how hard to work your machine

By default the miner uses every logical CPU your machine has, which will make the computer unpleasant to use. Cap it:

malairte-node --mine --mine-threads=2 --miner-key=<your-hex-private-key>

On a laptop or a machine you actually work on, leaving two threads free is the difference between a rig and an annoyance. There is no penalty for mining with fewer threads beyond a proportionally smaller share of the network.

Step 5 — Check that it is actually working

In a second terminal:

malairte-cli getmininginfo
malairte-cli getblockcount
malairte-cli getinfo

getmininginfo shows your mining statistics; getblockcount should be climbing and should match the height on the network status page. If your height is far behind, you are still syncing — wait rather than restarting.

To see whether you have been paid:

malairte-cli getaddressbalance <your-address>

Optional — Sweep rewards to another wallet

The node can move mined coins to an address of your choosing once a threshold is reached:

malairte-node --mine --miner-key=<key> --payout-addr=<destination> --payout-threshold=100000000000

The threshold is in atoms. The default of 100,000,000,000 atoms is 1,000 MLRT. This is useful if you want mined coins landing in a wallet held somewhere safer than the mining machine.

What can go wrong

  • Your antivirus quarantines the miner. Extremely common and usually a false positive — mining software looks like cryptojacking malware because the behaviour is identical. Verify the checksum first, then decide.
  • The GPU flag does nothing. The standard build needs a working OpenCL runtime; without a usable device it silently falls back to CPU-only. Check your GPU driver, or try the CUDA build if you have an NVIDIA card.
  • Height stops climbing. Usually peers. Check malairte-cli getpeerinfo; if it is empty, look at your firewall and whether port 9333 is reachable.
  • The machine gets hot and loud. Reduce --mine-threads, and if you are running a GPU consider undervolting. Sustained load is not the same as a gaming session.
  • You find nothing for a long time. That is expected, not a fault. Solo mining is a high-variance lottery — see the variance estimator for what your realistic wait looks like.

Before you scale up

Work out what it costs you. Measure the actual draw at the wall with a plug-in meter, then use the power cost calculator. At typical residential electricity prices, home mining is participation rather than income, and it is better to know that at the start than to work it out three months and one large bill later.

Educational information, not financial advice. Mining may not be profitable at your electricity price. Commands verified against the production node on 2026-08-31; run malairte-node --help for the authoritative flag list on your build.