Plate I · The mechanism

How a moth is made of math.

ehoney runs on Proof of Useful Work. Instead of burning electricity on meaningless hashes, you do the one operation that underpins all of modern intelligence: you multiply matrices. The reward is real ETH, set aside from a 5% fee on every $EH trade. Here is the whole machine, in four honest steps.

The work is real

You multiply matrices.

Matrix multiplication is the atom of machine intelligence. Every layer of every neural network is, underneath, this exact arithmetic.

The network hands you an eight by eight grid of integers. Your task is to multiply it against the challenge and report the result. This is not a throwaway puzzle. It is the same shape of computation a data centre performs billions of times a second, here made small, legible and verifiable.

An 8×8 integer field, rendered as a warm heatmap

II.

The lottery of proof

You find a winning ticket.

A correct answer is not enough. You search for a nonce, a small number, that ties your verified result to the network's difficulty target.

Your miner tries ticket after ticket, hashing each against the result until one lands below the threshold. Most fail in an instant. When one wins, you hold a compact proof that you did the work, and the chain can confirm it without redoing a thing.

nonce 0x1f4a…0x9c · miss

nonce 0x1f4b…0x71 · miss

nonce 0x1f4c…0x4d · miss

nonce 0x1f4d…0x03 · winner

A winning ticket falls below the difficulty target

III.

Get paid and weave

The block pays you, twice.

A winning block pays you a slice of the ETH pot straight to your wallet, and in the same breath weaves a one of one specimen.

The moth is not chosen from a menu. Its palette, span, banding, eyespots and rarity are all derived from the winning numbers themselves, hashed into a seed. The art and the proof are the same object. No two are alike, and none can be made again.

Woven from block #44,102

IV.

Where the ETH comes from

The pot is filled by trading.

The ETH you earn is not printed. It comes from a 5% fee on every buy and sell of $EH, kept as real ETH.

A hook on the trading pool takes that 5% in ETH from each swap and routes it into a communal pot. The busier the token trades, the fuller the pot, and the more each mined block pays. Nothing is diluted, no new tokens are made, and no one can touch the pot except the miners who earn it.

+5% ETH

Every buy and sell tops up the pot in ETH

Why this is not a gimmick

Most mining heats the room for nothing. This heats it for arithmetic that matters.

Traditional proof of work asks machines to guess numbers that mean nothing the moment they are found. ehoney asks for the one primitive every model in the world depends on. The proof is cheap to check and the work is real, so the energy you spend leaves something behind: a verified computation, ETH in your wallet, and a moth.

Plate II · Questions

Asked and answered.

Do I need special hardware to mine?

No. The challenge runs on an ordinary CPU. A laptop can win blocks, though anything that multiplies matrices faster, including a GPU, improves your odds. The point is accessibility: the math is the same everywhere, only the speed differs.

What exactly decides my moth's rarity?

The winning block's numbers are hashed into a single seed, and that seed deterministically sets every trait: palette, wing span, banding, eyespots, translucency and grade. Nobody assigns rarity. It falls out of the arithmetic, which means it cannot be gamed or pre-arranged.

Where does the ETH reward come from?

A Uniswap V4 hook takes a 5% fee in ETH on every buy and sell in the $EH pool and routes it into a communal pot. Mining pays you straight out of that pot. It is funded entirely by trading activity, never by inflation, and no new tokens are ever minted to reward you.

What is the total supply?

21,000,000 $EH, fixed forever. The whole supply is created once in the contract, with no inflation and no further minting after launch.

Are the moths really stored on-chain?

Yes. The generator, the traits and the rendering logic all live in the contracts. A specimen is reconstructed from its seed any time it is viewed, so there is no image file on a server that could vanish. The moth is as permanent as the chain itself.

Can I trade or breed my specimens?

Specimens are yours to hold, trade or pair. In the Cabinet you can place two parents on the breeding bench to preview a hybrid that blends their traits. When a moth resells, its royalty flows back into the same ETH pot that funds mining.

Try the miner yourself →