What the 25% reward cut at block 170,501 means for miners

Nockchain’s block reward drops by a quarter at block 170,501, from 2,048 NOCK to 1,536 NOCK.¹ The cut is set in the emissions table of the Aletheia specification, which activated at block 65,500 in May.¹ This means each block you find from that height on pays 25% less new NOCK.

When block 162,777 was mined at 11:56 UTC on October 10, 7,724 blocks remained before block 170,501.³ Nockscan’s trailing 576-block average, about 24 hours of blocks, was 150.1 seconds a block.² At that pace, block 170,501 arrives at about 22:00 UTC on October 23.² The estimate moves with every block. The counter above refreshes every minute while you have this page open.

The schedule

Era	Blocks	Reward per block	NOCK issued in the era
3	65,501 to 170,500	2,048	215,040,000
4	170,501 to 380,500	1,536	322,560,000
5	380,501 to 590,500	1,024	215,040,000

Fig. 01Reward eras around the cut, from the Aletheia emissions table. Eras 4 to 12 each last 210,000 blocks. After that, a 64-NOCK tail runs to block 16,144,876.

The specification caps total issuance at 2³², or 4,294,967,296 NOCK.¹ Issuance reaches that cap at block 16,144,876.¹ At block 162,777, mined at 11:56 UTC on October 10, mined supply stood at 2,349,590,528 NOCK, or 54.7% of the cap.⁶

What miners and the fund receive

Since Aletheia, the new NOCK in each block goes 80% to the miner and 20% to the protocol fund. The specification is clear that the split covers new issuance only: “The percentages apply only to that block’s new issuance, not total or circulating supply, previously issued NOCK, or transaction fees.”¹

1,638.4 to 1,228.8NOCK of new issuance the miner receives per block, before and after block 170,501. The protocol fund's share moves from 409.6 to 307.2 NOCK.Nocktane arithmetic from the Aletheia schedule and the 80/20 split

On Nockscan, the fund currently receives 409.6 NOCK per block, which matches 20% of 2,048.⁷

The protocol’s target is roughly 150 seconds a block. Since Anthropos, that target has been 149.86 seconds. At that pace, a day holds about 576 blocks.

On that basis, daily issuance falls from 1,179,648 NOCK to 884,736 NOCK. The fund’s daily share of new issuance goes from about 235,930 NOCK to about 176,947 NOCK. These are Nocktane’s calculations at the target block time. Real days run longer or shorter.

Miners also keep all transaction fees, which these figures leave out.

For AI and ZK miners

Since the Anthropos upgrade, the protocol aims to give 70% of blocks to the AI puzzle and 30% to the ZK puzzle.⁵ Nockscan’s 7-day count is close to that, with 69.6% AI and 30.4% ZK as of 12:06 UTC on October 10.⁴

At the targets, miners in the AI lane together collect about 660,603 NOCK a day before the cut and about 495,452 after. Miners in the ZK lane go from about 283,116 to about 212,337. Again, these are Nocktane’s calculations at a 150-second block time and the 70/30 split.

In NOCK terms, every block pays 25% less from block 170,501 on. What that means in dollars depends on the price of NOCK, which Nocktane does not forecast.

The next step down comes at block 380,501, when the reward falls to 1,024 NOCK.¹ We will report what this cut changed once the block has passed.