Straight answers about the Animica chain, ANM, wallets, mining, and the AICF compute lane.
Animica is a live post-quantum layer-1 blockchain. It combines post-quantum signatures (Dilithium3, SPHINCS+), a deterministic Python-based smart contract VM, and PoIES (Proof-of-Integrated-External-Services) consensus that rewards useful computational work alongside traditional mining. Mainnet is running today with a public explorer, wallets, RPC, and a mining pool.
ANM is Animica's native coin, used for transaction fees, contract execution, and compute settlement. Today you can earn it by mining through the pool at pool.animica.org, or trade it on the marketplace at animica.xyz. Buying with a card is temporarily unavailable while the buy desk is relaunched.
Animica addresses use bech32m encoding with the 'anim1' prefix — the same modern, checksummed format family used by Bitcoin taproot addresses. Addresses are derived from post-quantum public keys (Dilithium3 or SPHINCS+), so a typo is caught by the checksum before any funds move.
Classical signatures (ECDSA, Ed25519) can be broken by a sufficiently large quantum computer, and adversaries can record transactions now to attack them later — the 'harvest now, decrypt later' problem. Animica avoids this entirely by signing with Dilithium3 (ML-DSA-65) and SPHINCS+, both NIST-standardized post-quantum algorithms, from day one.
Animica contracts are written in Python and run in a deterministic, gas-metered virtual machine. The VM enforces reproducible execution so every node computes the identical result. You get a mainstream language and tooling instead of a niche contract DSL.
The full monorepo — node, wallets, SDKs, pool, and tooling — is public at github.com/animicaorg/all. Issues and pull requests are welcome.
There is a web wallet at wallet.animica.org, a desktop Qt wallet for Windows and macOS, and a browser extension wallet. The CLI (pip install animica) also includes wallet commands for hot and cold workflows. See the /wallet page for downloads and checksums.
pip install animica is the complete client: everything to mine, run a node, use the wallet, deploy Python contracts, run `animica up` (the unified miner — PoW + useful-work + GPU train/serve + Studio functions), and use the Studio SDK. The native CPU miner (animica-fastpow) is included by default. This is what most people want. pip install "animica[all]" (keep the quotes so zsh/macOS does not glob the brackets) adds every optional extra on top: Qt desktop-wallet QR codes, the full distributed Studio client (cloudpickle for closures plus omni-sdk for on-chain ANM escrow), and all server/operator dependencies pinned. Use it if you want the kitchen sink or are running pool/API infrastructure.
Point a RandomX CPU miner at the pool at pool.animica.org — and you can dual-mine XMR on the same hardware at the same time. Step-by-step setup, miner bundles, and pool stats are on the /mine page.
No. The pool at pool.animica.org runs the chain infrastructure for you — you just connect a miner and a payout address. You can also mine solo against your own node if you prefer full control.
Back up your mnemonic phrase offline and never share it. Wallet files are encrypted, but protect access to them as well. Verify the SHA256 checksum of any downloaded binary against the published checksum files before running it.
AICF is Animica's AI-compute lane: developers buy inference and training paid in ANM, and providers earn ANM by contributing benchmarked GPU hardware. The dashboard is at aicf.animica.org and provider onboarding is at /providers.
AICF settles natively on Animica. ANM billing keeps accounting, escrow, rewards, and governance on-chain and auditable.
Providers run benchmarked workers, receive jobs, submit receipts, and claim rewards. Routing weight depends on uptime, quality, and stake/reputation.
Yes. Contracts can lock ANM into escrow and trigger model jobs through contract-driven workflows with dispute windows and deterministic receipts.
Yes. AICF ships a Python bundle for providers who want source-level control, custom runtimes, and local instrumentation.
Open an issue on GitHub, email us, or ask on X — we read all three.
