Mine testnet coins
Mining is how new blocks and coins are created. On testnet you can do it just to learn. The coins are worthless and the difficulty is low, so the whole process becomes something you can watch happen.
How mining and pools work
Mining secures the network and issues new coins. Miners race to find a number that makes a block's cryptographic hash meet a difficulty target. This is proof of work. The first to find it publishes the block and earns its reward. Finding a block solo can take a long time, so miners join a pool.
A pool combines everyone's effort. You submit shares (near-miss solutions that prove you're working), and when the pool finds a block it splits the reward among contributors in proportion to the shares they sent. TestnetPool runs pools for the Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Monero testnets so you can see all of this without spending anything.
Step by step
Get a testnet payout address
Create one in TestnetWallet for the coin you want to mine.
Pick a coin and pool endpoint
On TestnetPool, choose the chain and note the pool's connection details, which include its stratum address (the standard way miners connect to a pool).
Point a miner at the pool
Testnet uses the same miners as mainnet. For learning, a CPU miner is plenty, and Monero in particular is designed to be CPU-mined. Configure it with the pool address and your payout address.
Watch your shares
The pool dashboard shows your hashrate and accepted shares in real time.
Get paid in test coins
When the pool finds a block, your share of the reward lands at your payout address.
See it on the explorer
Find your blocks and payouts on TestnetScan.
Low difficulty is a feature here
Testnet difficulty is low, so even modest hardware can find blocks, which means you get to see the entire lifecycle of a mined coin. Remember that the payout has no value; this is for learning, not profit.
Only want coins to play with, not the mining experience? The faucet is faster.
Testnet coins are fake money
- Mined test coins have no market value, so never buy or sell them.
- Never use a real seed phrase or import a real wallet on testnet.
- Never send mainnet BTC, LTC, or XMR to a testnet address.