The EarthBucks 2.0 Network Plan

EarthBucks 2.0 is becoming a working system.

The last update was about progress: Rust mines, database state, transaction validation, Merkle ordering, mine-to-mine networking, mining-pool substrate, and the start of the new EarthBucks app.

A wallet opens and checks mine1.earthbucks.com for headers and proofs.

A browser miner logs into earthbucks.com, gets work from the pool, and submits shares without talking directly to a mine.

A website embeds Compucha, asks a visitor for proof-of-work instead of a captcha, and that work can eventually point at the same EarthBucks mine network.

That is the split EarthBucks 2.0 is building toward: mines settle, pools coordinate work, wallets hold money, and apps create demand.

The old model put too much into one place. The new model gives each part a job.

The first mine network

EarthBucks 2.0 will launch with at least three production mines:

• mine1.earthbucks.com
• mine2.earthbucks.com
• mine3.earthbucks.com

Those names are not decoration. In EarthBucks, mines are identified by domain names. A mine is a professional network participant: it validates transactions, maintains UTXO state, synchronizes transaction order with peer mines, accepts solved work, and participates in finality.

This is different from Bitcoin’s anonymous public node model. EarthBucks mines are known services with domain identities. At launch, the first mines will be operated by Astrohacker. In the future, mines may live at other domains and may be operated by other businesses.

Three known mines are enough to stop pretending the network is a single server.

Mines are not pools

The most important product change in EarthBucks 2.0 is that mines and pools are separate concepts.

In the early EarthBucks design, a mine was basically what Bitcoin would call a mining pool. The same service handled users, miners, validation, accounting, and network behavior.

That was useful for getting EarthBucks 1.0 shipped. It is not the right shape for EarthBucks 2.0.

In EBX2, a mine is a validating network service. It owns consensus-facing behavior. It does not need to be a public consumer app.

A pool coordinates proof-of-work. It asks mines for work templates, distributes work to miners, tracks shares, and submits solved work back to the mine that issued it.

The mine is the settlement layer. The pool is the economic coordinator for hashpower.

Those should not be the same thing.

earthbucks.com remains the first pool

earthbucks.com will continue to be the main EarthBucks app.

It will also continue to be the first EarthBucks mining pool.

Internally, the new app is currently called www-pool. That is an engineering name, not the public product name. The old www-earthbucks-com app needs to keep running while the new app is built, so the new project needs a different directory and package name.

The public destination is still EarthBucks.

The new app will eventually live at earthbucks.com. During development, it may be useful to run it somewhere else, but the product boundary is clear:

• earthbucks.com is the wallet, pool, docs, and status app.
• the mine subdomains are validating network services.

The app is not a mine.

That distinction matters because it lets more pools exist later without making every pool a consensus participant.

Wallets connect with SPV

Users should not need to run mines.

EarthBucks wallets should be able to connect to mines with SPV-style verification. A wallet can submit transactions, verify headers and Merkle proofs, inspect transaction status, and show finality without becoming part of the validating mine network.

The EarthBucks app will include a wallet. That is the default user experience.

But EarthBucks 2.0 should also support third-party wallets. If someone wants to build a different wallet UI, a mobile wallet, a terminal wallet, or a wallet inside another product, they should be able to connect to the mines and verify what they need to verify.

The user-facing app and the network should not be welded together.

That is the point of having mines, pools, and wallets as separate roles.

More pools are coming

At launch, the first pool is earthbucks.com.

In the future, there should be more pools.

The most likely second pool is Compucha.

Compucha is a proof-of-work captcha replacement. Instead of asking users to click traffic lights, decipher distorted text, or train someone else’s image classifier for free, a website can ask the user to perform a small amount of proof-of-work.

The current Compucha direction is already useful: an embeddable iframe, a challenge endpoint, a verification endpoint, WebGPU mining when available, and a WASM fallback when it is not.

The EarthBucks direction makes it better.

If proof-of-work is needed to log into a website, that work should not merely vanish. It should be able to mine EarthBucks. The user proves they spent real computation, the website gets a better abuse filter than a captcha, and the work can participate in an actual cash network.

Proof-of-work is better than captchas.

Earning money is better than proof-of-work that goes nowhere.

That is why pools should be separate from mines. compucha.com can become a pool with a totally different product surface from earthbucks.com, while still talking to the same EarthBucks mine network.

KeyPears is the protocol layer

EarthBucks 2.0 is also being built in the same direction as KeyPears.

KeyPears is the identity, messaging, and secret-exchange layer of the Astrohacker portfolio. It uses domain-based federation, cryptographic authentication, and proof-of-work where appropriate.

EarthBucks needs the same style of internet-native plumbing.

The plan is for EarthBucks services to use KeyPears-compatible protocol ideas so users and apps can send authenticated messages, transaction data, and service requests across compatible domains.

That matters because EarthBucks is not just one website. It is a network:

• mines at domain names;
• pools at domain names;
• wallets that connect to mines;
• apps that create reasons to earn and spend EBX;
• services that need to exchange signed messages and transactions.

KeyPears gives that world a common protocol direction.

What users can expect

EarthBucks 2.0 is not live yet, and some implementation details will keep changing as the system hardens.

But the direction is no longer fuzzy.

The first production network has multiple mines. Wallets connect to mines without becoming mines. The EarthBucks wallet ships in the app, and third-party wallets should be able to use the same network.

Pools become a product layer. earthbucks.com is first. Compucha is the next serious candidate: a proof-of-work captcha replacement that can turn login friction into useful mining.

KeyPears-compatible service communication ties the pieces together so the Astrohacker projects do not become isolated islands.

And continuity still matters. EarthBucks 2.0 is not a new genesis block, not a balance reset, and not a new coin. It is the next network architecture for EarthBucks.

The simple model

Mines settle.

Pools coordinate work.

Wallets hold money.

Apps create demand.

That is the EarthBucks 2.0 network plan.

Build the mines. Connect the pool. Open the wallet. Let other apps plug in.

Hack the universe.