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Hobby provers ​

A hobby prover runs Prova on existing hardware: a laptop, a Mac mini, a Synology NAS, an old desktop in the closet. Spare TB you weren't using anyway, monetised. No data center, no UPS, no rack.

This is the smallest tier we support. Earnings scale with bytes proven, nothing else. A 4 TB NAS will earn proportionally less than a 100 TB rack, full stop. The only way to earn more is to provide more storage.

Who this is for ​

  • Someone with a Mac mini, Synology / QNAP NAS, or unused desktop with at least 1 TB free
  • A residential connection with decent upload bandwidth (≥ 50 Mbps symmetric is comfortable; 25 Mbps works but limits throughput)
  • Someone OK with running a process 24/7 and getting woken up by uptime alerts a few times a year

This is not for people who:

  • Have a laptop they close at night (provers must stay online)
  • Have an asymmetric connection with < 10 Mbps upload (you'll miss proofs)
  • Want to monetise consumer hardware they don't intend to keep running

What you get ​

Hobby tier
Min usable disk1 TB free
Min stake100 PROVA × committedGiB (with USDC-equivalent floor)
Hardware presetSelf-hosted
Setup time30 minutes
Realistic capacity1–20 TB
EarningsUSDC per deal × bytes proven, plus protocol PROVA emission proportional to bytes proven

Setup (Linux, macOS, Synology DSM) ​

1. Install provad ​

bash
curl -fsSL https://get.prova.network/prover | sh

Drops the binary in /usr/local/bin/ and writes a starter config to /etc/prova/prover.toml. On macOS the launchd plist is offered; on Linux the systemd unit is offered.

On Synology, follow the Synology DSM install guide (uses the Container Manager package).

2. Configure your share ​

provad will ask:

  • Storage path: where bytes get stored. On a NAS this is usually /volume1/prova/ (Synology) or /mnt/storage/prova/ (Linux).
  • Capacity: how many GB you want to commit. Start small (e.g. 500 GB). You can grow later.
  • Wallet: your Base address. PROVA stake goes here and earnings settle here.

3. Stake PROVA ​

bash
prova-prover stake 50000   # 50,000 PROVA → enough for ~500 GB

The stake locks until you unbond. Unbonding has a 7-day cooldown.

4. Register ​

bash
prova-prover register --capacity 500GB --region eu-north

After registration, the marketplace can route deals to you.

Hobby-tier limits ​

  • Hard cap: 100 TB committed. Above this, you must register as a prosumer tier (different identity attestation requirements).
  • No KYC: under 100 TB you can register pseudonymously with just a wallet address that's been active > 30 days.
  • Single identity: one prover per wallet. The protocol detects and slashes obvious sybil patterns (multiple provers on the same cf-connecting-ip or with correlated proof timings).

Realistic earnings ​

Earnings come from two places:

1. USDC from clients ​

For every deal you accept, you earn 99% of the per-day USDC stream as long as you keep posting valid proofs. At launch pricing ($1.50–$3.00 per TB-month), a 5 TB hobby prover with 80% utilisation earns roughly:

5 TB × 0.8 utilisation × $2.00/TB-mo × 99% = $7.92 USDC / month

Modest. Hobby tier is not a get-rich path. The math gets meaningful at 20 TB+, or once you stack the protocol PROVA emission on top.

2. PROVA emission ​

In addition to USDC, the protocol mints PROVA emission to provers proportional to bytes proven. Emission is heavy in the early years to bootstrap the network (declining schedule, full details in the tokenomics doc).

Critical: emission only flows to provers actually proving bytes, gated by:

  • The prover != client check (you can't farm emission by storing your own data)
  • The redundancy cap (a piece-cid only earns up to N=4 provers' worth of emission)
  • A 30-day vesting on emission rewards (fast-churn provers earn nothing)
  • A quality multiplier (if your proof success rate drops below 95% in trailing 30 days, your emission is halved)

The whole point: the only way to earn more PROVA is to honestly store more bytes for longer.

Operational discipline ​

  • Uptime matters. Missed challenges → slashing. Hobby provers should aim for ≥ 99% proof success.
  • Disk health. SMART failures cause missed proofs. Replace drives at the first warning.
  • Restarts. Plan reboots between proof epochs. The dashboard shows the current epoch boundary.
  • Backups. You don't need to back up the bytes (the network handles redundancy at the protocol level). But back up your prover.toml and the wallet's keystore.

Next steps ​

Apache-2.0 OR MIT.

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