On Thursday, a solo bitcoin miner, operating with approximately 230 terahashes per second of computing power, successfully validated block 943,411, earning a reward of 3.139 BTC, valued at around $210,000. Notably, this miner's share of the total network hashrate was extremely small, virtually negligible on most dashboards.
The miner was connected to solo.ckpool.org, an anonymous solo mining pool established in 2014 that allows operators to retain their full block rewards, minus a 2% fee. Con Kolivas, the developer of CKpool, confirmed the win on social media, highlighting that the miner had overcome odds of approximately 1 in 28,000 to find a block on any given day.
The winning miner, identified as bc1qtt7cr9cxykyp9g4hq47zf5lq9t97cxvq72lun3, achieved this feat with a relatively modest setup of about 230 terahashes, equivalent to roughly 0.00002% of bitcoin's total estimated hashrate of approximately 1 zetahash per second as of early April. This setup is indicative of a small, home-based operation rather than a large-scale industrial or cloud-based mining endeavor. For perspective, Riot Platforms, a listed mining company, operates at a hashrate of over 30 exahashes, which is approximately 130,000 times the hashrate of the winning miner. This solo win marks the 312th block found by CKpool since its inception and ends a 33-day drought without a solo block.
Over the past 12 months, solo pools have discovered a total of 20 bitcoin blocks, distributing a combined 62.96 BTC, which translates to approximately one solo block every 18.7 days on average, with the longest gap being 58 days. This achievement continues a pattern of solo miners overcoming significant odds to secure substantial rewards, as seen in December with a 270 TH/s miner claiming a $284,633 reward against 1-in-30,000 daily odds, and in November, a 6 TH/s miner beating 1-in-180-million odds to earn roughly $265,000.