How much can you earn on Gonka: realistic calculations

Pools are the easiest path for those who don't want to delve into technical details. The pool operator rents GPUs, configures ML-nodes, ensures uptime, and mines GNK for all participants. Income is distributed proportionally to the investment, minus the operator's commission.

Main pools and their conditions:

• Gonka.Top: minimum entry from $100. Pool collection for 2 weeks, monthly payouts over 180 days. Guarantee without skipping epochs (critically important — skipping an epoch = loss of reward). Referral program: 25% of the income of attracted L1 + 5% L2. Also offers dedicated servers (see below).
• Ancapex: the lowest entry threshold on the market — from $1, daily payouts. Suitable for testing mechanics with a minimal amount.
• GonkaPool.ai: classic scheme "10% entry + 10% of mining output", entry from $500. 180 days vesting.
• CloudMine (Mingles): contracts by "weight" 50–10000, payment in USDC on Base.

A complete and up-to-date table with commissions and conditions for six pools is available on the provider comparison page (also — a separate section "Hashiro Alternatives" for those who used it before).

Pool income formula: (your share in the pool * GNK rewards for the period * GNK price) - operator's commission. Suppose you invested $500 in a $50,000 pool (1%). If the pool mined 100,000 GNK in a month, your share is 1,000 GNK. At a price of $0.60 — that's $600 before commission. At $0.30 — $300. At $1.50 — $1,500. The GNK price is the main multiplier.

Important: the exact operator's commission depends on the pool. Clarify the conditions before investing. The calculations provided are illustrative, not guaranteed.

Gonka.Top offers not only pools but also dedicated servers with full service — from $12,000/month. What's included in this amount:

• Rental and setup of server equipment (H100/H200 GPU)
• Installation and configuration of inferenced CLI
• 24/7 monitoring and uptime guarantee
• Technical maintenance and software updates
• Mining goes directly to your wallet — no sharing with other participants

Spheron provides bare-metal H100/H200 servers for self-connection to Gonka through its TGE-referral program. This is an option for those who want to set everything up themselves but rent the equipment.

The advantage of a dedicated server over a pool: 100% of the reward goes to you (minus rental costs). No sharing with dozens of other participants. Disadvantage: the entry threshold is an order of magnitude higher ($12,000/month vs $100 one-time). Profitability also depends on the GNK price and network load — at a low GNK price, monthly expenses may exceed income.

This path suits those who are willing to invest a substantial sum, want maximum control over income, but do not want to deal with server setup themselves.

The most profitable, yet most complex path: connecting your own GPU directly to the Gonka network. No pool fees, no rental payments — the entire reward is yours. But the entire responsibility is yours as well.

Technical requirements:

• GPU: NVIDIA with 40GB+ VRAM — H100 (80GB), H200 (141GB), A100 (40/80GB). Consumer cards (RTX 4090 = 24GB) are not suitable
• CPU: AVX support is mandatory — a set of instructions for accelerating computations. Without AVX, inferenced will not start
• Storage: ~640GB for the weights of the Kimi K2.6 model (total for all layers)
• Software: Docker, inferenced CLI, CUDA drivers
• Network: stable, low-latency internet
• Uptime: 24/7 — missing an epoch = loss of reward for that period

Hardware cost: H100 — ~$25,000—35,000 for purchase, or ~$2—3/hour for rental from cloud providers. A100 is cheaper (~$10,000—15,000) but less powerful. Detailed setup instructions can be found in our mining guide, and GPU recommendations in the best GPUs for Gonka section.

This path pays off under two conditions: 1) the price of GNK is high enough to cover electricity and hardware costs; 2) the network is loaded enough for your node to regularly receive tasks. With the current network (~4,648 GPUs), competition is growing — but so is the number of AI requests.

Income from participating in Gonka is determined by several key factors, each of which deserves understanding:

• GNK Price: the main multiplier. All rewards are paid in GNK. If the price grows from $0.60 to $6.00, your dollar income will increase 10x with the same number of tokens mined. The reverse is also true: a price drop significantly reduces dollar income. Current price is ~$0.50—$0.60 (SafeTrade, HEX OTC, March 2026).
• Network Load: the more AI requests the Gonka network processes, the more GNK is distributed to hosts. Growth in the number of users, integration of third-party services, government projects (Uzbekistan) — all this increases load.
• Number of GPUs in the network: ~4,648 GPUs as of March 2026. As more hosts connect, competition for rewards increases. However, the network's processing capacity also grows, attracting more users.
• Hardware Efficiency: more powerful GPUs process more requests per unit of time. H100 (80GB VRAM) is significantly more productive than A100 (40GB). H200 (141GB) is even faster. The difference in efficiency can be 2—3x.
• Uptime: missed epochs = lost rewards for that period. Stable 24/7 uptime is a mandatory requirement for maximum income. Pools with uptime guarantees (Gonka.Top) solve this problem for you.
• Market Conditions: the crypto market is cyclical. Bull phases can multiply GNK value, while bear phases can devalue it. TGE and tier-1 CEX listings (Binance, Coinbase) could be catalysts for growth, but they may not happen as expected.

Disclaimer: past performance does not guarantee future results. All calculations on this page are illustrative. Nothing on this site constitutes financial advice. Only invest what you are willing to lose.