In a stunning turn of events, a solo bitcoin miner with a modest 230 terahashes per second of computing power successfully validated block 943,411, earning approximately $210,000 in the process. This achievement is all the more impressive given that the miner's share of the total network hashrate is virtually negligible, rounding to zero on most dashboards. The miner was connected to solo.ckpool.org, an anonymous solo mining pool that has been in operation since 2014 and charges a 2% fee. Con Kolivas, the developer behind CKpool, confirmed the win, highlighting the miner's incredibly low odds of finding a block - roughly 1 in 28,000 per day.
The winning miner, bc1qtt7cr9cxykyp9g4hq47zf5lq9t97cxvq72lun3, had a hashrate of approximately 230 TH, representing a minuscule 0.00002% of bitcoin's total estimated hashrate of roughly 1 zetahash per second. To put this into perspective, listed miner Riot Platforms alone boasts a hashrate of over 30 exahashes, which is roughly 130,000 times greater than that of the winning miner. The block marks the 312th solo win registered on CKpool since its inception and the first since February 28, ending a 33-day drought. Over the past 12 months, solo pools have found a mere 20 bitcoin blocks, resulting in a combined payout of 62.96 BTC.
This works out to approximately one solo block every 18.7 days on average, with the longest gap being 58 days. The win is the latest in a series of unexpected solo mining successes, including a 270 TH/s miner that overcame 1-in-30,000 daily odds to claim a $284,633 reward in December, and a 6 TH/s miner that defied 1-in-180-million odds to earn roughly $265,000 in November.