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 controlled a negligible share of the total network hashrate, which is nearly imperceptible on most dashboards. The miner was connected to solo.ckpool.org, an anonymous solo mining pool established in 2014, which 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 miner, bc1qtt7cr9cxykyp9g4hq47zf5lq9t97cxvq72lun3, with approximately 230TH, solved the 312th solo block. At 230 terahashes, the winning rig accounts for about 0.00002% of bitcoin's total estimated hashrate of roughly 1 zetahash per second as of early April, consistent with a small-scale home operation. For perspective, listed miner Riot Platforms operates over 30 exahashes, roughly 130,000 times the hashrate of Thursday's winner.
This block marks the 312th solo win 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, averaging about one solo block every 18.7 days.
This win continues a pattern that has repeated with surprising regularity, including a roughly 270 TH/s miner clearing 1-in-30,000 daily odds in December and a miner running just 6 TH/s beating 1-in-180-million odds in November.