Mine it on the computer you already own.
Zecnero (ZMR) is a Zcash fork built on Zebra. Its proof of work is built so an ordinary desktop CPU is competitive hardware, and shielded transactions come with it. The public testnet is running now and anyone can mine it. Mainnet has not launched; a testnet beta of the wallet is out.
Everyone starts at block zero.
Nobody gets a quiet head start. Every block below the first halving pays 3% of its subsidy, 0.1875 ZMR, to a published founder script: 314,999.8125 ZMR in total, 1.5% of the 20,999,993.5652 ZMR ever issued. The stream goes back into development and infrastructure. It is paid to a public 2-of-3 multisig (P2SH) address, and any spending is posted publicly. That stream is the only allocation: no premine, no dev fund, and no height reserved for any miner. After launch the founder mines in the open, on the same rules as you.
Your CPU counts here.
Zecnero runs RandomX, which is built so the most efficient hardware for it converges on an ordinary processor. Dedicated RandomX hardware sold so far has shown little efficiency advantage over a high-end desktop chip. Renting hashpower is still possible, and a miner with most of the hashrate can censor and reverse recent blocks, so nodes refuse to reorganise more than 20 blocks, about 25 minutes of chain.
Full mining guide →curl -fsSL https://downloads.zecnero.org/install-miner.sh | bash
irm https://downloads.zecnero.org/install.ps1 | iex
It asks you to save your mining key, makes a wallet for your pool payouts (save its 24 words too), then mines on the official pool, pool.zecnero.org, about a minute later, with no node to sync. Choose solo instead to run your own node. Installed before? Run zecnero-miner update, then zecnero-miner mode pool. The mining guide explains what it does, walks Windows through WSL, and lists the downloads.
21 million. Then it stops.
Each block pays 6.25 ZMR, and that halves every 1,680,000 blocks, same idea as Bitcoin and Zcash. There is no tail emission waiting at the end. Issuance stops after 30 halvings at 20,999,993.5652 ZMR, and stays there.
Zcash privacy came along for the fork.
Zecnero is built from Zebra, the Rust node the Zcash Foundation maintains. Shielded addresses and zero-knowledge proofs carry over, so sending ZMR privately works the way Zcash users already know.
Every Zecnero payment is shielded. Transparent outputs exist only in mining rewards, which must be shielded before they can be spent. Mainnet enforces this from block 1. The public testnet still allows transparent payments for now. Zecnero, Zcash and Monero compared.
Mine it from block one.
Every block from the first one is mined in public, by whoever is running a node. The code, the specification and the open issues are all on GitLab.