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. This achievement is remarkable, given that the miner controls a negligible share of the total network hashrate, which rounds to zero on most dashboards. The solo miner was connected to solo.ckpool.org, an anonymous solo mining pool introduced in 2014, which 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 roughly a 1-in-28,000 chance of finding a block on any given day. The winning miner, bc1qtt7cr9cxykyp9g4hq47zf5lq9t97cxvq72lun3, with a hashrate of ~230TH, solved the 312th solo block. Notably, a miner of this size has a 1 in ~28k chance per day of solving a block. At 230 terahashes, the winning rig represents a mere 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 operation, possibly using a few home-scale ASICs, rather than a large industrial operation. For context, listed miner Riot Platforms alone operates with over 30 exahashes, roughly 130,000 times the hashrate of Thursday's winner. The block is 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 through this cycle, with similar unexpected wins in December and November, where miners defied significant odds to claim substantial rewards.