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, yet still managed to overcome significant odds. 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 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 a hashrate of approximately 230TH, solved the 312th solo block, as reported on CKpool's platform. This achievement is even more impressive considering the miner's relatively small size, representing about 0.00002% of bitcoin's total estimated hashrate of roughly 1 zetahash per second as of early April.
For comparison, listed miner Riot Platforms operates with over 30 exahashes, roughly 130,000 times the hashrate of Thursday's winner. This solo win marks the 312th solo block 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, averaging one solo block every 18.7 days, with the longest gap being 58 days.
This win continues a pattern of surprising regularity in solo mining successes. Previous notable wins include a 270 TH/s miner clearing 1-in-30,000 daily odds to claim a $284,633 reward in December, and a 6 TH/s miner beating 1-in-180-million odds to land roughly $265,000 in November.
Additionally, in late February, a miner turned approximately $75 of rented cloud hashrate into a $200,000 reward by pointing just 1 petahash at CKpool for a few hours.