questions
Every answer here ends with the clause of the specification that settles it. Where an answer and the paper disagree, the paper is right.
control
Can the creator change the supply or the emissions later?
No. There is no update instruction, no stored admin key and no setter in the program. The creator field on a token's config is attribution, and no instruction accepts it as a signer.
This is not a policy anyone has to keep. The code path does not exist.
Can Gems itself mint more of a token?
No. The mint authority is revoked in the same transaction that mints the supply, and no freeze authority is set. After that transaction the cap holds at the SPL token level, independently of whether Gems's own arithmetic is correct.
What can the platform authority actually do?
Set two flat lamport fees and the address they go to. It cannot touch any launched token's supply, emission, difficulty, round length or allocation. Every fee-charging instruction takes a maximum the user signs and fails rather than exceeding it.
mining
Does faster hardware earn more?
No. One accepted proof per wallet per round, and the share is proportional to staked units rather than to solving speed. Faster hardware only makes it more likely you finish before the round closes.
Why do I need to hold the token before I can dig it?
Because weight is deposited units of that token, held in custody by the program. A wallet with no active stake cannot submit at all.
The alternatives were tried. A base weight per wallet is multiplied by generating wallets, which is free. A balance snapshot counts transferable units, which can be walked through prepared wallets and counted more than once.
Can I dig from several wallets to get a bigger share?
Splitting one position across two wallets produces two submissions whose weights sum to what the single position would have been. It changes nothing except the number of transaction fees you pay.
I missed a round. Did I lose anything?
No. A missed round means no submission and therefore no share of that round. Your stake and your accrued rewards are untouched. Missed rounds are normal enough that the interface reports them in muted text rather than as errors.
How long do I have to collect a round's share?
Roughly 32 rounds, which is about half an hour at the 60-second cadence. Settlement happens on your next action against that token, so a miner acting every round always settles. Walk away for longer and the unsettled tail is forfeit, staying unmined in the vault.
money
When can I withdraw my stake?
Whenever you are not carrying unsettled round weight. If you submitted in a round that has not settled, the whole position is locked until it does, which is one round length.
Rewards are separate: claim moves them from the emission vault, withdraw returns principal from the stake vault, and the two vaults are different accounts.
What does a token launched here trade at?
Nothing, until somebody independently creates a market for it. Gems does not open a liquidity pool, lock one, or route a trade. A permissionless pool created after the mint is published can be front-run, which is why the prototype that did it was removed rather than shipped.
What are the fees?
Solana transaction fees every round you submit, plus a flat platform fee per launch and per mine instruction. Those two values have not been chosen yet, so no figure for them appears on this site. Read the fee in your wallet, not here.
Are there jackpots, bonuses or referral rewards?
No, and there will not be. Consideration plus chance plus prize is the gambling-law test, and a launchpad that meets it in one jurisdiction meets it for every user there. Every share is a deterministic function of the round's budget and the weight in it.
status
Is this live on mainnet?
Yes. Every excavation runs on mainnet, and every launched token gets a Raydium pool at launch.
Has it been audited?
Not independently. Two reviews have been run and found no remaining high-severity issues in their reviewed scopes, but no external security firm has looked at it, and an independent program review is a stated prerequisite before mainnet.
Where is the source?
Not published yet. The paper cites the repository path behind each clause so that the claims are checkable by whoever holds the source, which is honest but is not the same as being verifiable by you today.
A question that is not here is either answered in the paper or not answerable yet. Nothing on this site states a figure, a date or a capability the program does not currently have.