SN4 Mining Setup

Mining on Targon runs on TargonOS — a signed, purpose-built operating system that provisions the machine end to end. You install it once; on every boot it attests to the Targon network, brings up its encrypted storage, and starts the Targon services on its own.

Steps to install TargonOS can be found in the TargonOS installation guide.

TargonOS replaces the previous provisioning flow (manual host OS preparation + the TVM installer). If you have nodes set up the old way, reprovision them by installing TargonOS.

Emissions

Miner emissions are paid per card based on each auction's target price and the amount of compute live on the network: while an auction is below its card target, every live card earns up to the payment cap; as more cards come online, the pool is spread across them and the per-card rate settles toward the target price. To view the current emission targets, query the auctions API:

curl -X GET https://tower.targon.com/api/v2/auctions | jq

or visit stats.targon.com/targets to see the compute emission targets.

Example response (truncated):

{
  "auctions": {
    "TDX-VM-NVIDIA-H200": {
      "target_cards": 96,
      "target_price": 290,
      "max_price": 350,
      "min_cluster_size": 8
    },
    "TDX-VM-NVIDIA-B200": {
      "target_cards": 16,
      "target_price": 420,
      "max_price": 650,
      "min_cluster_size": 8
    }
  },
  "tao_price": 215.13482275
}

Field	Meaning
target_cards	Maximum number of cards targeted for the auction.
target_price	Targeted price per card.
max_price	Payment cap per card — never paid more than this.
min_cluster_size	Minimum cluster size required to participate.

All prices are in USD per hour per card, reported in cents — e.g. a max_price of 350 means $3.50/hour.

⚠️ Important: Any emissions not allocated to auctions are burned.

Installing TargonOS

Follow the TargonOS installation guide. It covers the BIOS settings the installer requires, and both install paths:

• iPXE netboot (unattended) — best for fleets; pass your hotkey on the kernel command line and the install runs with no console interaction.
• ISO (interactive) — best for one-off installs; boot from USB or BMC virtual media and the installer walks you through network setup, disk selection, hardware verification, and hotkey entry.

⚠️ Warning: The installer wipes every eligible disk on the machine. Only run it on hardware you intend to dedicate to TargonOS.

After the install, the machine reboots into TargonOS and takes care of itself — attestation, encrypted storage, and the Targon services all come up automatically on every boot. No further setup is required on the node.

Updating or Running the Miner

Once your TargonOS nodes are up, update your miner configuration to report the IP address of each node you are running.

1. Update or create the configuration file

Edit config.json to include the IP addresses of your TargonOS nodes. Add them to the list of endpoints your miner reports to the network, along with any other desired parameters.

Example config.json (comments are for reference — remove them from the actual file, as JSON does not support comments):

{
  // Only include the pure IP address of each node
  "nodes": [
    { "ip": "0.0.0.0" },
    { "ip": "0.0.1.1" }
  ],
  "hotkey_phrase": "one one one one one three one one one one one two",
  // External IP of your miner, used to register the axon on Bittensor
  "ip": "160.202.129.179",
  // Port for the miner to use
  "port": 7777,
  // Chain endpoint for your miner to connect to
  "chain_endpoint": "wss://test.finney.opentensor.ai:443",
  // Netuid to use — only change when running a testnet miner on 337
  "netuid": 4,
  // Minimum stake (in alpha) required for validators to get nodes
  "min_stake": 1000
}

Note: Keep your node IPs up to date. If you add or remove TargonOS nodes, update this configuration accordingly.

2. Start the miner

docker compose -f deploy/docker-compose-miner.yml up -d --build

or:

make up-miner