On Thursday, a solo bitcoin miner, operating with approximately 230 terahashes per second of computing power, successfully validated block 943,411, earning a block reward of 3.139 BTC, valued at around $210,000. Notably, this miner's share of the total network hashrate is so minimal that it is effectively zero on most tracking dashboards. The miner was connected to solo.ckpool.org, a solo mining pool launched in 2014 that allows operators to keep 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 roughly a 1-in-28,000 chance of finding a block on any given day. The winning miner, bc1qtt7cr9cxykyp9g4hq47zf5lq9t97cxvq72lun3, with a hashrate of approximately 230 TH, solved the 312th solo block. At 230 terahashes, this winning rig accounts for about 0.00002% of bitcoin's total estimated hashrate, which is roughly 1 zetahash per second as of early April. This output is consistent with a small setup of home-scale ASICs running under a single roof, rather than a large industrial operation or rented cloud burst.

For comparison, listed miner Riot Platforms alone operates over 30 exahashes, which is roughly 130,000 times the hashrate of Thursday's winner. 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 just 20 bitcoin blocks, distributing a combined 62.96 BTC, which translates to roughly one solo block every 18.7 days on average, with the longest gap being 58 days. This win continues a pattern that has repeated with surprising regularity. In December, a miner with approximately 270 TH/s overcame 1-in-30,000 daily odds to claim a $284,633 reward. In November, a miner running just 6 TH/s, which is the output of a single old-generation ASIC, beat 1-in-180-million odds to land roughly $265,000.

Additionally, in late February, a miner transformed approximately $75 of rented cloud hashrate into a $200,000 reward by directing just 1 petahash at CKpool for a few hours.