Two open-source projects for running a private, optimized Monero + Tari mining operation at home: an orchestrator (Pithead) and the miners that feed it (RigForge). Decentralized, zero-fee P2Pool payouts straight to your own wallet, all behind Tor — no custodians, no exposed home IP, no pool fees, no hand-tuning.

🌐 p2pool-starter-stack.github.io · free & MIT · no token · no premine · no VC · Tor-first

A professional-grade, containerized stack that runs a private Monero full node, P2Pool, Tari merge mining, a single mining endpoint, and a live dashboard — all behind Tor, in one command.

• 🧅 Private by default — Tor hidden services for Monero, Tari, and P2Pool; your router stays shut and your home IP is never advertised to an inbound peer.
• ⛏️ Monero + Tari, merge-mined — every hash mines Monero on zero-fee P2Pool and merge-mines Tari at once: a second payout for zero extra power or config.
• 🧠 Algorithmic yield optimization — watches the XMRvsBeast raffle and shifts hashrate to grab bonus rounds, donating only the minimum to hold your tier, then handing every spare cycle back to your own P2Pool payouts.
• 🔌 One endpoint for every rig — all your miners point at a single address; no wallet in the miner, no per-rig pool config.
• 📊 A dashboard worth leaving open — live hashrate, the P2Pool/XvB split shading in real time, the PPLNS window, an honest tier + explicit VIP status, and per-worker stats, served over HTTPS on your LAN.
• 🔒 Hardened out of the box — least-privilege containers, SHA256-verified pinned binaries, and tightly scoped Docker-socket proxies (read-only for stats, start/stop-only for failover).

Turn any Ubuntu/Debian — or macOS — machine into a tuned mining worker in one command. RigForge compiles stock, commit-pinned XMRig from source, applies CPU- and kernel-level tuning for maximum RandomX hashrate, and runs it as a managed service — then points it at your stack, or any RandomX pool.

• ⚡ One command from bare metal to a running, tuned miner — on Ubuntu/Debian or macOS.
• 📈 Measurably faster, and cooler — +3.5% hashrate and +7.6% efficiency on a Ryzen 7800X3D, measured live against stock XMRig (and +6.6% on a 48-core EPYC).
• 🧠 Hardware-aware — detects your CPU (AMD EPYC, Ryzen X3D, …), applies a matching profile, then live-A/Bs the hardware prefetcher to keep the fastest.
• ⚙️ Kernel-tuned (Linux) — HugePages (1 GB / 2 MB), MSR access, NUMA binding, and a performance governor, done for you.
• 🔗 Plug-and-play — connects to Pithead, or any RandomX Stratum pool. Stock XMRig pinned to a verified commit — no custom binary, a 0% dev fee, idempotent re-runs.

flowchart LR
    Rigs["🔥 RigForge miners<br/>(many machines)"] ==>|"hashrate · :3333"| Orc["🟠 Pithead<br/>(the orchestrator)"]
    Orc ==>|"merge-mine, over Tor"| Chains["🪙 Monero + Tari"]
    Orc -.->|"bonus rounds"| XvB["🎲 XMRvsBeast"]

Point as many RigForge miners as you like at a single Pithead. The stack handles the nodes, privacy, payouts, and optimization; the miners just hash.

How do I mine Monero privately at home? Run the P2Pool Starter Stack. One command stands up a private Monero full node, P2Pool, and a single mining endpoint behind Tor — your home IP is never advertised to an inbound peer and you never forward a port. Point any XMRig rig (or a RigForge worker) at it and you're mining straight to your own wallet, no account and no custodian.

Do I have to forward ports or expose my home IP? No. Monero, Tari, and P2Pool run as Tor hidden services, so inbound peers reach you over an onion address and your router stays shut; RPC is localhost-bound. The few outbound yield paths still on clearnet in v1.0 are mapped in the privacy guide and move to Tor-by-default in v1.1.

What is P2Pool, and why mine to it instead of a centralized pool? P2Pool is a decentralized, peer-to-peer Monero mining pool: no operator, no account, and no pool fee — the network pays block rewards straight to your own wallet. The stack runs your own P2Pool node, so you get decentralized, zero-fee payouts without the fiddly setup.

Is it free? Are there any fees? Yes — free and MIT-licensed. P2Pool charges no pool fee, and RigForge compiles stock XMRig with the dev-fee pinned to 0%. No token, no premine, no VC — just an optional Monero donation if a stack saves you time.

Can I point my existing XMRig miners at it? Yes — point any XMRig or RandomX rig at the stack's single endpoint (host:3333), no wallet in the miner. For maximum hashrate, RigForge provisions a kernel-tuned XMRig worker in one command (+3.5% hashrate / +7.6% efficiency on a Ryzen 7800X3D vs stock).

What hardware do I need? Stack host: Ubuntu Server 24.04, 16 GB+ RAM, an SSD (~300 GB pruned; 2–4 TB for set-and-forget). Mining itself is CPU-bound — Monero's RandomX runs on any modern AMD/Intel CPU, and large-L3 chips (Ryzen X3D, EPYC) shine. RigForge tunes per-CPU automatically.

A few principles you'll see throughout the code:

• Privacy is the default, not a setting. Inbound rides Tor hidden services — no port forwarding, your home IP never advertised to a peer — and RPC is localhost-bound. The few outbound paths that still touch clearnet in v1.0 are mapped in the privacy guide and move to Tor-by-default in v1.1.
• Least privilege, everywhere. Capability-scoped containers, a read-only Docker-socket proxy kept separate from a start/stop-only one, owner-only secrets. Nothing gets more access than it needs.
• Verifiable and pinned. Third-party binaries are SHA256-checked and version-pinned — no curl | bash trust.
• The why lives in the code. Non-obvious decisions are documented inline with their reasoning and the issue that drove them, so the next person — or the next you — understands the trade-off.
• Small, reversible, issue-driven changes. Work is scoped to focused issues; config changes are previewed and warn before anything disruptive; failures degrade gracefully (clean OOM handling, node-down failover, hold-the-miner-until-synced).
• Respect the operator's time and hardware. Sensible auto-tuning, one-command setup, and docs treated as a first-class deliverable — "a setup you can finish before your coffee gets cold."

• New to this? → Pithead gets the whole operation running in one command.
• Already have the stack? → RigForge provisions your miners.
• Want the overview? → p2pool-starter-stack.github.io

Both projects are at their v1.0 — RigForge complete, Pithead feature-complete and through its release gate. Everything here is MIT-licensed and built in the open. Issues and pull requests are welcome.