Community member, Paj, built a custom PoP miner to optimize fee spending and ensure transactions go through.

Hemi’s community is strong, and from time to time Hemigos and Hemigas up the gambit, with fun, innovative, and interesting new projects. In this Hemi Community Highlight, we focus on Paj, a community member working to improve the Proof-of-Proof (PoP) mining experience.

For nearly a decade, Paj immersed himself in Web3. From co-founding early crypto projects to conducting technical deep dives for a venture firm, his experience ranges from builder to analyst. Prior to blockchain, he worked in the telecommunications industry, and developed a keen sense of infrastructure and other general knowledge that translated well to Web3. 

“I purchased my first bitcoin in 2013,” Paj recalls. “Back then, I was mainly using it as a tool to move money across countries without having to deal with banks.” But as the rabbit hole grew deeper and Web3 industry grew, Paj eventually found himself quitting his job to pursue a full-time crypto career.

Hemi popped onto Paj’s radar after a client requested a deep dive. “What really caught my attention—besides Max’s iconic hair—was the team’s background and the Hemi Bitcoin Kit.” Interoperability between Bitcoin and Ethereum on Hemi seemed like a potential game changer. He wanted to know more.

Paj’s PoP Miner

PoP miners must spend small amounts of BTC to finalize Hemi transaction data on Bitcoin bocks in transactions. To reduce daily fee spending and maintain an optimized PoP mining operation, Paj dug in deeper to see how the miner operated.

For his PoP miner, Paj focused on adding quality-of-life features to Hemi’s existing PoP miner. One such improvement is dynamic fees, where the miner can track network conditions to adjust fees accordingly and ensure transactions go through. He’s also adding some dashboard functions to track fee spending, uptime, and a miner’s transaction count. He’s also experimenting with mempool scanning to either delay or drop PoP transactions during times of peak congestion, to optimize fee usage.

“I don’t think of it as reinventing the current miner,” Paj explains, “but it’s about making it easier for miners to monitor performance and avoid stuck transactions.” 

For now, Paj’s custom miner isn’t publicly available, but as he continues to refine it, he says it’s not outside the realm of possibility. PoP miner engineering isn’t Paj’s only project—he’s also working on his own game-fi project, but says he’ll continue to keep an eye on how Hemi evolves.

Building on Hemi?

A large part of what makes Hemi so amazing is our community. If you or a community member you know is using Hemi as the foundation for something great, let us know, and we’ll do our best to showcase it.