Game · medium · 6 min

Ticket Hunter

Race a rival miner to three blocks with Pearl's real mining steps, shrunk to toy size

How matrix work turns into BLAKE3 lottery tickets
The bar is target × tile work, a price per multiply-accumulate
Why changing one entry of A re-rolls A's noise and every ticket
The rank-penalty rule and WTEMA retuning after each block

Ticket Hunter

Race a rival miner to three blocks with real (toy-sized) Pearl mining

Best—

Arcade · mining

Find three blocks before the rival. Every attempt is real Pearl mining, shrunk to toy size.

Each attempt multiplies two noisy matrices and turns 4 tiles of the result into BLAKE3 tickets. A ticket that crosses the bar wins a block.

Set your rank right, keep mining, and watch the bar retune after every block.

M mine (hold to keep mining)
E change one entry of A instead
[] lower / raise the rank
B Bitcoin mode on / off

Toy sizes: 4×16 and 16×4 matrices, 2×2 tiles, noise rank 4. The steps and hashes are Pearl’s; the sizes are not.

Levels

Best —

Runs in your browser · scores stay on this device src/lib/miner.ts runToyJob · block.ts jackpotBound · wtema.ts nextBits

How to play

Press Mine, or hold it, to make attempts. Each attempt is one toy mining job with a new header timestamp: the miner commits to matrices A and B, derives the noise from those commitments, multiplies the noisy matrices, and folds each of four hash tiles into a BLAKE3 ticket. Tickets fly onto the track. The further right, the rarer. A ticket that crosses your bar wins a block. The rival does the same at a fixed speed, and the first to three blocks wins.

Change one entry of A is another way to make an attempt. The header stays the same, but A’s noise and every ticket change, because A’s noise seed is derived from A’s own commitment. B’s noise stays put: its seed doesn’t depend on A.
Noise rank applies Pearl’s rank-penalty rule to your bar. Below 128 the block is rejected. Above 128 the bar shrinks by 128/rank. In level 2 your rig starts at the wrong rank.
After every block the bar retunes, WTEMA style: a quick block makes it stricter, a slow one looser.
Bitcoin mode swaps your rig for nonce grinding. The hash of the header itself must be under the target, with the same odds per try, but no matrices and no useful work.

Keyboard: hold M to mine, E changes an entry of A, [ and ] change the rank, B toggles Bitcoin mode.

What’s real and what’s simplified

Real: every attempt runs the site’s port of Pearl’s mining code. That means the BLAKE3 job key, the keyed matrix commitments, the version-3 salted noise seeds, the low-rank noise, the tile transcript with its XOR fold and rotate, the keyed BLAKE3 ticket, and the bound check (ticket ≤ target × tile work). The rank factor comes from Pearl’s own bound formula, and the retune after each block calls Pearl’s WTEMA rule.
Simplified: the sizes are toys. A is 4 × 16, B is 16 × 4, the tiles are 2 × 2 and the noise has rank 4. On mainnet the matrices have thousands of rows, the noise rank is 128 and a ticket covers a tile such as 2 × 64 or 8 × 16. The rank control applies the penalty rule to the bar without changing the toy’s own noise.
The clock is compressed: about 6 seconds of play stand for Pearl’s 194, and the retune uses a short time constant so you can see it move. Mainnet’s is one week.
The rival’s speed is fixed, and real mining has no fixed rival, just everyone else’s hashrate. Winning blocks here produce no certificate. On mainnet a pool turns a winning ticket into a zero-knowledge proof of about 60 KB.