Whitepaper · v1.0
Pasiv: passive income from hardware you already own
July 2026 · pasiv.network
Abstract. Hundreds of millions of capable computers sit idle most of the day. The value they could earn is real but locked behind command lines, config files, custodial "cloud mining" schemes, and software that hides what it does. Pasiv is a desktop app that removes all of that: one button, a payout address you paste, and your machine quietly mines the most profitable coin it can — paid by the pool directly to you, with a transparent, time-sliced 4% fee that only accrues while you're actually earning. Pasiv holds no funds, requires no account, and does nothing silently.
01The problem
Consumer mining has an experience problem, not a hardware problem. Modern consumer machines — Apple Silicon in particular — are genuinely competitive at CPU-friendly proof-of-work like RandomX. What stops people is everything around the mining:
- Complexity. Real miners are command-line tools with JSON configs, pool URLs, TLS ports, and per-algorithm flags. That's a hobbyist's weekend, not a product.
- Distrust. The space is crowded with bundled adware, hidden dev fees, custodial dashboards that hold your coins, and "miners" that are simply malware. A reasonable person defaults to no.
- Choice paralysis. Which coin? Which pool? When it changes weekly, the honest answer is a moving target no casual user will track.
Fixing this is a design problem: make the trustworthy path the easy path.
02Design principles
- Three taps. Download, paste a payout address, press start. No accounts, no config files, no command line.
- Non-custodial, structurally. Pools pay your address directly. Pasiv has no wallet, holds no balances, and never asks for keys — there is nothing to trust us with.
- Consent-first. Mining is off until you press start, every capability is opt-in, and stop always means stop. Nothing launches itself.
- Honest economics. One fee, stated everywhere it matters, that mechanically cannot tick while you're paused — with a local ledger and an on-chain address so you can check the receipts.
- Quiet by default. A menu-bar app that respects thermals and battery, not a dashboard that wants your attention.
03Architecture
Pasiv is a native desktop app built on Tauri 2 — a Rust core with a lightweight webview UI. The core is organized around a few load-bearing pieces:
- Supervisor. A single state machine (Idle → Starting → Mining ⇄ Paused, Error) owns the mining lifecycle. The UI, the tray icon, and the fee meter all read the same state — what you see is what is running.
- Engine adapters. Mining engines sit behind a common interface. Today that is XMRig (the industry-standard RandomX miner, vendored and sandboxed as a sidecar process) for the RandomX coins, a native VerusHash engine that runs in-process for Verus — no sidecar, no extra binary — and a GPU adapter (SRBMiner-Multi, for Pearl on supported NVIDIA cards) built for the Windows/Linux releases. New engines slot in without touching the rest of the app.
- Hardware detection. The app inspects your CPU and GPU up front and shows only what your machine can actually run — no dead toggles, no pretending a laptop is a rig.
- Governor. Thermal and battery guardrails throttle or pause mining so the app stays a good citizen on the machine it lives on.
- Data-driven coin roster. Coins are registry entries (ticker, algorithm, pool, address format validator), so new coins ship as app updates — no re-architecture per coin.
- Signed auto-updates. Releases are signed and (on macOS) notarized; the built-in updater verifies release signatures on-device before installing. The release manifest is public — the website's download buttons read the same file the updater does.
04Coins & engines
| Coin | Hardware | Algorithm | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monero (XMR) | CPU | RandomX | Live |
| Zephyr (ZEPH) | CPU | RandomX | Live |
| Salvium (SAL) | CPU | RandomX | Live |
| Verus (VRSC) | CPU | VerusHash | Live |
| Pearl (PRL) | GPU (NVIDIA Turing+) | GPU | Windows/Linux releases |
Every listed coin pays out through an established public pool (MoneroOcean for Monero; HeroMiners for Zephyr and Salvium; LuckPool for Verus) straight to the address you pasted. Pools charge their own fee, typically around 1%, under their own published terms. The roster is chosen deliberately: coins a consumer machine can mine competitively, on pools with direct address payouts — and it grows via updates as candidates clear that bar.
05Auto / Max-Profit mode
The headline feature answers the question no casual miner wants to babysit: which coin should this machine be on right now?
The RandomX coins (Monero, Zephyr, Salvium) share one algorithm, so a given machine produces the same hashrate on each. That makes their expected profitability directly comparable:
(Block time cancels out across RandomX chains, so this ranks coins per unit of hashrate.) The app computes this from public, key-free data — CoinGecko prices and pool-published network stats — and:
- starts mining on the top-ranked coin when Auto mode is on,
- re-ranks every 15 minutes while mining,
- switches only when the challenger is ahead by more than an 8% hysteresis margin, so near-ties don't cause constant churn,
- and shows you the live ranking and the reason for the current pick — never a silent switch.
Auto mode is opt-in and off by default, and it ranks the RandomX family only. Verus uses a different algorithm (VerusHash), so a Mac's hashrate on it isn't comparable on network economics alone — it's always a deliberate manual pick. Prefer to hold a specific coin? Pick it and Pasiv stays put.
06Economics: the 4% that only ticks while you earn
Pasiv's fee is 4%, taken as time-sliced mining and only while you are actively earning. That is the entire amount Pasiv receives.
| Line item | Amount | Taken by |
|---|---|---|
| Pasiv fee | 4% | Pasiv — as time-sliced mining, only in the Mining state |
Two further fees exist that are not Pasiv's and never reach us. They are listed here because they affect what lands in your wallet, and you should hear about them from us rather than find them yourself:
| Line item | Amount | Taken by |
|---|---|---|
| Pool fee | ~1% | Your chosen pool, per its own published terms |
| XMRig dev donation | 1% | The XMRig developers — built into the mining engine Pasiv bundles |
On that second one: Pasiv ships the stock XMRig binary, which carries a 1% developer donation floor. Rebuilding it from source with the donation removed is permitted by its licence and is planned; until that ships, XMRig keeps its 1%, and we say so here and in the app rather than describing it as removed.
The fee is time-sliced hashrate — the same mechanism as the dev fees experienced miners already accept, but with the books open:
- For 4% of active mining time, shares are submitted to Pasiv's fee address; the other 96% of the time they go to yours, untouched. Slices are short and frequent, never one long diversion.
- The fee counter is driven by the same state machine that drives the UI, and it advances only in the Mining state. Idle, paused, starting, or errored time contributes zero — it is structurally impossible to charge a paused user.
- Every slice is written to a local, append-only fee ledger shown in the app, next to the fee address itself — which is a compile-time constant. Changing it requires a new signed release with a changelog entry. You can verify the totals on-chain.
There is nothing else: no ads, no subscription for personal use, no additional cut of your payouts. A planned paid tier (Pasiv Cloud) adds fleet monitoring and remote control for people running multiple rigs, priced per rig — the single-machine app stays free.
07Trust model
Pasiv's security posture starts from an assumption of zero earned trust — reasonable, given the neighborhood:
- Signed, notarized builds. macOS releases are Developer ID-signed and Apple-notarized; updates are signature-verified by the app before install.
- No custody, no keys. There is no wallet inside Pasiv, no place to enter a seed phrase, and no server that ever sees your payout address.
- No account wall. Wallet sign-in exists as an optional convenience and proves address ownership by signature; skipping it costs you nothing.
- Anonymous, optional telemetry. A handful of anonymous product events (never addresses, never file contents), with autocapture and session recording disabled and an in-app off switch. See the privacy policy for the exhaustive list.
The never-list. Commitments that hold in every release:
- Never mine without an explicit start from you.
- Never switch coins silently — Auto mode is opt-in and shows its reasoning.
- Never change the fee or fee address silently — both require a signed release and a changelog entry.
- Never hold, route, or touch user funds.
- Never bundle ads, third-party offers, or software you didn't ask for.
08Roadmap
- Windows and Linux releases, including the GPU (Pearl) engine on supported NVIDIA hardware.
- Roster growth — additional coins as they clear the bar: minable competitively on consumer hardware, direct-payout pools, honest economics. (Candidates that fail the bar are dropped, not shipped.)
- Pasiv Cloud — mobile companion, alerts, and fleet control for multi-rig operators, priced per rig.
- New ways to earn — we continuously evaluate adjacent workloads (e.g. compute markets) and add one only when it meets the same consent, custody, and honesty requirements as mining. No timeline is promised until one does.
This document describes software, not an investment. Mining earnings depend on coin prices, network difficulty, your hardware, and electricity costs; they vary and can be zero. Nothing here is financial advice, and Pasiv makes no earnings guarantees. Coin names and pool names belong to their respective projects.