So I've been playing around with HOT mining on NEAR inside Telegram, and honestly it's pretty straightforward once you get the hang of it. Basically you create a wallet, claim your first HOT, and the mining just starts automatically. But here's the thing—you've got this Storage bar that fills up over time, and once it's full, mining stops until you claim your rewards.

The whole system is designed to keep you engaged. You start with a wooden storage that holds 2 hours of mining for free, but if you want longer uninterrupted mining sessions, you can upgrade it with HOT. There are 6 levels total, going up to a gold storage that can hold 24 hours of mining. Same deal with the fireplace—it controls your base mining speed, and you can level it up too.

What's interesting is that HOT mining gets way more efficient if you actually use the ecosystem. The fireplace levels let you increase from 0.01 HOT per hour all the way to 0.05 HOT per hour at the highest tier. Then there's the wood multiplier system for people who really dive deep into NEAR Protocol, and the referral system is honestly the best part—you get 20% from direct referrals and 5% from second level. That's where the real mining acceleration happens.

When you actually claim your HOT, it goes on-chain immediately, but you do need to pay gas. Good news is NEAR fees are dirt cheap, like $0.005 per transaction. You get 3 free claims to start, then you either top up NEAR, use HOT to cover gas (though that's less efficient), or complete missions for free transactions. The whole thing is actually pretty well thought out for making blockchain transactions accessible without crazy fees.

After Chain Abstraction rolled out, HOT isn't just locked into NEAR anymore—you can use it across Ethereum and other networks too. That's when things got really interesting for the ecosystem.