Parasite Mining Pool Strikes Again, Finding Its Second Bitcoin Block

A groundbreaking bitcoin mining pool, designed to challenge conventional industrial pay-per-share models and pure luck-based approaches, has achieved a significant milestone by mining its second block. This upstart pool, known as Parasite Pool, mined block 945,601, marking its second successful block since its launch in April 2025, roughly 48 days after its initial block at #938,713 in late February. The block included 7,398 transactions and generated 0.002 BTC in fees, with bitcoin trading at $76,213 at the time. The pool operates on an innovative hybrid model, where the winning miner receives 1 BTC directly, and the remaining 2.125 BTC, along with fees, are distributed proportionally among all participants based on their contributions since the previous block. This model eliminates participation fees, and payouts are facilitated through the Lightning Network. Bitcoin mining is secured through a competitive process where computers solve complex cryptographic puzzles every 10 minutes, with the winner earning the right to add the next block of transactions to the blockchain and receiving a reward. The current reward is 3.125 BTC plus transaction fees, valued at approximately $238,000, down from 6.25 BTC after the April 2024 halving and scheduled to decrease further to 1.5625 BTC in 2028. The mining landscape is dominated by large-scale industrial operators utilizing specialized ASIC hardware, which consumes significant amounts of electricity. Mining pools aim to reduce the variance in block discovery by aggregating the hashrate of thousands of participants, allowing proceeds to be split based on contribution rather than a winner-takes-all approach. Founded by ZK Shark, the creator of the Ordinal Maxi Biz NFT collection on Bitcoin, Parasite targets home miners. Unlike pure solo pools like CKpool, which pay the full block reward minus a 2% fee to the finder, Parasite's model splits the difference, preserving the lottery-style payday with a 1 BTC finder's fee while maintaining a steady flow of satoshis to participants through proportional distribution. The second block mined by Parasite holds more significance than the first, as the pool has successfully retained hashrate during the 48-day gap between payouts, validating its mechanics. With a current hashrate of 52 petahashes per second, down from a peak of 182 PH/s in June 2025, Parasite accounts for roughly 0.005% of bitcoin's estimated 1-zetahash network hashrate. The success of solo and small-pool mining has been gaining attention, with recent reports of a home miner beating 1-in-28,000 odds to claim a $210,000 reward and another operator renting cloud hashrate to validate a block for a $200,000 payday. As the first pool of its scale to test a hybrid split, Parasite's model will be further validated if it mines a third block within the next two months, while a six-month drought would suggest the first two blocks were anomalies.