On Thursday, a solo bitcoin miner, operating with approximately 230 terahashes per second of computing power, successfully validated block 943,411 and received 3.139 BTC, valued at around $210,000. This achievement is notable given that the miner's share of the total network hashrate is so small that it is effectively zero on most dashboards. The miner was connected to solo.ckpool.org, a solo mining pool that has been in operation since 2014 and allows operators to retain their full block rewards, minus a 2% fee.
Con Kolivas, the developer of CKpool, confirmed the win, highlighting that the miner had roughly a 1-in-28,000 chance of finding a block on any given day. The winning rig, with a hashrate of 230 terahashes, represents a tiny fraction, approximately 0.00002%, of bitcoin's total estimated hashrate of roughly 1 zetahash per second as of early April. This output is consistent with a small-scale, home-based operation rather than a large industrial or cloud-based setup.
In contrast, listed miner Riot Platforms operates with a significantly larger hashrate of over 30 exahashes, roughly 130,000 times that of the winning miner. The block is the 312th solo win registered on CKpool since its inception and the first since February 28, marking the end of a 33-day drought.
Over the past 12 months, solo pools have found just 20 bitcoin blocks, distributing a combined total of 62.96 BTC, which translates to approximately one solo block every 18.7 days on average, with the longest gap being 58 days. This win continues a pattern that has been observed with surprising regularity in this cycle, with previous notable wins including a 270 TH/s miner clearing 1-in-30,000 daily odds to claim a $284,633 reward in December, and a 6 TH/s miner beating 1-in-180-million odds to land roughly $265,000 in November.