ErgoMetal
A native, research-oriented Autolykos v2 miner for Apple Silicon. Resource-aware profiles, transparent telemetry and no donation by default. Experimental public preview for macOS 26.5 or later.
Apple Silicon mining without the usual baggage
ErgoMetal is a focused command-line miner for people who want native performance, transparent behaviour and control over what their machine is doing.
Native Metal pipeline
Built in Swift and Metal for arm64, with the compiled GPU library embedded in one standalone executable. Dataset construction, prefetch and search are designed specifically around Apple Silicon.
Resource-aware by default
The efficiency profile uses responsive batches and pauses in serious or critical thermal states. Automatic prebuild falls back to a single dataset buffer when the recommended Metal working set lacks safe headroom.
Secrets stay out
Mining needs only a public payout address. ErgoMetal never accepts private keys or wallet seed phrases, validates TLS certificates and excludes pool URLs, addresses and passwords from metrics and event logs.
No donation by default
Nothing is donated unless you explicitly choose a positive --donation percentage. The percentage allocates wall-clock time, not hashes or shares, and failed donation windows are never recovered later.
Operation you can inspect
A loopback-only status API, Prometheus metrics and optional JSONL history expose hashrate, duty cycle, dataset state, thermal readings, shares and donation activity without publishing credentials. Stratum TCP keepalive detects silent dead peers and feeds the existing automatic reconnect path.
A verifiable release
The public build is a single Apple Silicon executable with a Developer ID signature, Hardened Runtime and Apple notarization. A separate SHA-256 file makes the download independently checkable.
Purpose-built for Metal, down to the hot path
This is an independent Autolykos v2 implementation rather than a wrapper around a CUDA or OpenCL miner. Optimisation remains observable and consensus behaviour remains testable.
Architecture-aware tuning
ErgoMetal classifies the selected Apple GPU and automatically tunes Search and Dataset threadgroups, batch and chunk sizes, and pipeline depths. Results are cached per GPU architecture and executable, while unrecognized or newer hardware starts from M1-safe defaults.
Consensus checked
Focused tests cover Autolykos boundaries, byte order, UInt256 arithmetic, CPU and Metal agreement, metrics redaction and valid event history using independent reference vectors.
Honest about the cost
Mining is sustained compute: it raises GPU load, power use and unified-memory pressure, and can reduce foreground graphics performance. Resource-aware means controlled and visible, not free of resource use.
Download ErgoMetal
A notarized Apple Silicon arm64 build for macOS 26.5 or later, with faster CPU consensus verification.
Before you start
What does ErgoMetal require?
An Apple Silicon Mac running macOS 26.5 or later, a pool endpoint and a public Ergo payout address. Current mainnet datasets need substantial unified memory. Intel Macs and universal builds are not supported.
How do I run the download?
Unpack the ZIP, open Terminal in that folder and start with ./ergometal devices. A minimal mining command is: ./ergometal mine --pool stratum+tls://POOL:PORT --wallet ERGO_ADDRESS --worker my-mac. Use ./ergometal --help before connecting to review every option.
Which command-line options matter?
--pool selects the Stratum endpoint and --wallet the public payout address; both are required for mining. --worker gives the Mac a readable pool name. --profile efficiency|peak balances responsiveness against maximum throughput, with efficiency as the default. --prebuild auto|on|off controls preparation of the next dataset. By default, --autotune auto measures and caches Search and Dataset threadgroups, batch and chunk sizes, and pipeline depths for the selected GPU and executable. For reproducible benchmarks, use --autotune off and set all eight execution values explicitly. --stats-file keeps an optional local history, while --api-bind exposes the loopback-only status and metrics endpoint; ./ergometal --help lists every override.
Is donation mining required?
No. Donation is disabled by default. It is enabled only when a positive integer from 1 through 100 is passed with --donation on mainnet; 1 means one minute in each 100-minute wall-clock cycle.
Is the miner safe to use?
The release is signed, notarized and designed to keep wallet secrets out of the process: it accepts public payout addresses, not private keys or seed phrases. It is still experimental mining software and can sustain high GPU, memory and power load, so monitor your Mac and begin with the efficiency profile.