How to start earning GNK: a step-by-step guide

A pool aggregates participants' funds, rents GPUs, and mines GNK collectively. You don't need equipment or technical knowledge — the pool operator handles everything. This is the most popular path for beginners.

Available pools (May 2026):

• Ancapex: entry from $1, daily payouts, 20% of rewards — the lowest entry threshold on the market. Ideal for testing the mechanics with a minimal amount.
• Gonka.Top: entry from $100. The pool is collected in 2 weeks, after which mining begins. Payouts monthly for 180 days. Guarantee against skipped epochs — if the operator skips an epoch, losses are compensated. Referral program: 25% of the attracted participant's investment (L1) + 5% (L2). Also offers not only pools but also dedicated servers with maintenance.
• GonkaPool.ai: entry from $500. Classic scheme "10% entry fee + 10% of mining income", 180-day vesting.
• CloudMine (Mingles): contracts by "weight" 50–10000, USDC on Base payment. Platform 8% + 10% insurance fund. Suitable for those who want fiat settlements instead of waiting for GNK vesting.

How to choose a pool: compare operator fees, payout frequency and history, guarantee size, availability of a referral program. A detailed comparison of all providers is on the comparison page. The general principle: the longer the pool has been operating and the more transparent its reporting, the more reliable it is.

Important to understand: pool income depends on the GNK price, network load, and operator efficiency. This is an investment, not a deposit — profitability is not guaranteed.

Risks: pool income is paid in GNK (except for CloudMine, where settlements are in USDC). If the token price falls, your dollar income will decrease, even if the amount of GNK remains the same. The pool operator can also change conditions or cease operations. Choose pools with a transparent history and guarantees. Nothing on this website is financial advice — invest only discretionary funds.

How the pool works technically: the operator collects funds from participants, rents servers with GPUs (usually H100 or H200), configures inferenced CLI, connects nodes to the Gonka network, and starts processing AI requests. GNK earned by the nodes is distributed among participants proportionally to their investment. The entire process for a participant: registration → payment → waiting → monthly GNK payouts. No technical actions are required from you.

Referral programs: Gonka.Top offers a two-tier referral program — 25% of the attracted participant's investment (L1) + 5% from participants attracted by your referral (L2). GonkaPool.ai and Ancapex also have their referral programs. If you plan to attract friends and acquaintances — this is significant additional income.

Before registering in a pool, we recommend reading the GNK Economics section — understanding tokenomics will help you choose the optimal strategy from day one.

For those who want more control and potentially higher income than in a pool. A dedicated server is a GPU machine that mines GNK directly to your wallet, without sharing with other pool participants.

Gonka.Top offers fully managed dedicated servers from $12,000/month. This includes: GPU rental (H100/H200), node setup, connection to the Gonka network, 24/7 monitoring, maintenance, and software updates. You receive a wallet address to which GNK for processed AI requests are directly deposited. The operator handles all technical issues.

Spheron and other providers offer bare-metal H100/H200 servers for self-connection to Gonka (users from Russia may experience payment difficulties when using Spheron through a payment processor). This option is cheaper but requires self-configuration of the inferenced CLI, Docker, and on-chain registration.

Who it's suitable for: medium to large budgets ($12,000+/month), a desire to receive all income without pool fees, but without the need to self-administer servers. The main advantage over a pool: 100% of the income goes to you (minus rental costs), and there is no dependency on the pool operator's distribution decisions.

Comparison with a pool: In a pool, you share income with other participants and pay a commission to the operator. With a dedicated server, all income (minus rental) is yours. Potential profitability is higher, but the entry threshold is also significantly higher: $12,000/month vs. $100 in a pool. The choice depends on budget and risk appetite. A detailed comparison is in the article “How much can you earn”.

What maintenance includes: 24/7 uptime monitoring (missing epochs = loss of income), automatic software updates when new inferenced versions are released, configuration backup, technical support. You receive a dashboard with reports on your server's operation: number of requests processed, GNK earned, uptime.

Uptime and epochs: In Gonka, rewards are accrued for epochs – fixed time intervals. If your node is offline during an epoch, you do not receive a reward for that period. For a dedicated server, uptime is the operator's responsibility. Gonka.Top guarantees no missed epochs – this is a key advantage over self-configuration.

If you have an NVIDIA GPU server with 320+ GB of VRAM (for example, 4× H100), you can connect it directly to the Gonka network. This is the most profitable route: the entire reward for processed AI requests goes to you, with no pool fees and no rental costs.

Hardware requirements:

• GPU: NVIDIA with CUDA support, at least 320 GB of VRAM in total per ML node. H100 (80GB), H200 (141GB), A100 (80GB), B200 and B300 all qualify — several cards in a single node.
• Total VRAM: hundreds of gigabytes per model instance — several H100/H200 in one node (the network's heaviest model, GLM-5.3 Flash, needs about 560 GB).
• CPU: must support AVX instructions (without AVX, inferenced won't start).
• RAM and disk: enough for the model weights — hundreds of gigabytes for a large MoE model.
• Internet: stable, for receiving tasks from Transfer Agents and sending results.
• Uptime: 24/7. Missing epochs reduces your reward.

Connection process: install the inferenced CLI → configure Docker → download the model weights → register on-chain → receive tasks from Transfer Agents → process AI requests → earn GNK. A detailed step-by-step walkthrough is in our mining guide.

Who it's for: technical users with experience in Linux, Docker and GPUs. Those who already own suitable hardware (ROI is highest when there are no rental costs) or who are ready to invest in buying servers (from ~$100K for a server with 4× H100).

Common setup problems: inferenced requires AVX instructions on the CPU — without them the software won't launch (SIGILL error). Model weights weigh hundreds of gigabytes — you need fast internet to download them. Docker must have GPU access through the NVIDIA Container Toolkit. If you're not confident in your technical skills, consider a dedicated server (Path 2), where the operator handles all the technical details.

How rewards work: every processed AI request earns GNK. 80% of the payment for a request goes to the host (you), 20% goes to the community pool. The more powerful your GPU and the higher your uptime, the more requests your node processes and the more GNK you earn. Rewards are credited on-chain and visible in your wallet in real time.

Community help: if you get stuck at any setup step, Gonka has an active Discord community where experienced hosts help newcomers. The open-source code on GitHub lets you see how inferenced works under the hood. There's also official documentation for a quick host start.

Not sure? Just try it. On our website there's a built-in AI chat running on the real Gonka network. It's free and requires no registration. You ask a question — and a real network model — MiniMax M2.7, DeepSeek V4 Flash, or GLM-5.3 Flash (all built on the MoE architecture) — answers through the decentralized network. This is not a demo or an imitation — your request is processed by real GPUs on the Gonka network.

Why bother: to make sure Gonka actually works before putting money in. To see the speed and quality of the responses. To understand that decentralized AI is not an abstract concept but a working product.

Next steps after the AI chat:

1. Set up a wallet to hold GNK: the easiest is Karman — it opens right in your browser, nothing needs to be installed. Alternatives: GG Wallet (an open-source Chrome extension) or Gonka.Wallet (a Telegram Mini App).
2. Read the article "Where GNK's value comes from" — understand the token's economics.
3. Choose your path: a pool (from $100), a server (from $12,000/mo), or your own host (you'll need a server with 320+ GB of VRAM).
4. Head to the provider comparison page and get started.

From first introduction to your first GNK — anywhere from 10 minutes (pool) to a few hours (your own host).

About wallets: Karman is a GNK wallet from the joingonka team that works like a regular page in your browser; the seed phrase and keys stay only on your device. GG Wallet is an open-source Chrome extension from Gonka Labs, the team behind the gonka.gg explorer. Gonka.Wallet is a Telegram Mini App, a convenient mobile option for those already on Telegram. All three are free. A detailed overview of every storage option is in the article "Wallets for GNK".

About security: when you use the AI chat, your data is not stored on our servers. The request is encrypted, sent to the Gonka network, processed on one of the network's ML nodes, and returned. No information is handed to third parties. This is the advantage of a decentralized architecture: unlike OpenAI, where all requests pass through one company's servers, Gonka has no single repository of user data.

For serious miners, monitoring is critical: track GPU temperature (no higher than 85°C under sustained load), power consumption, and the ratio of GNK earned to expenses. Many pools provide built-in dashboards, but you should also set up Telegram notifications in case a node goes down — every hour of downtime is lost tokens.