Parasite Mining Pool Strikes Again, Finding Its Second Bitcoin Block

A novel Bitcoin mining pool, designed to challenge conventional pay-per-share and lottery-style approaches, has now demonstrated the effectiveness of its model with two successful block findings. On Friday morning, the upstart Parasite Pool mined block 945,601, marking its second achievement since its launch in April 2025, roughly 48 days after its initial block at #938,713 in late February. The block contained 7,398 transactions and 0.002 BTC in fees, with Bitcoin trading at $76,213 at the time. This pool operates on a distinctive 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 submitted shares since the previous block. Notably, there are no fees associated with participating in this pool, and payouts are efficiently routed through the Lightning Network. The pool's founder, the pseudonymous ZK Shark, also the creator of the Ordinal Maxi Biz NFT collection on Bitcoin, aims to support home miners. By offering a 1 BTC finder's fee and proportionally distributing the remainder, Parasite Pool seeks to balance the lottery-style payday with consistent satoshi flow to participants. The successful mining of the second block carries significant weight, as it validates the pool's mechanics and demonstrates its ability to retain hashrate through the 48-day gap between payouts. Currently, Parasite Pool's hashrate stands at 52 petahashes per second, accounting for roughly 0.005% of Bitcoin's estimated 1-zetahash network hashrate. This achievement is part of a broader trend in solo and small-pool mining, which has seen notable successes, including a 230 terahash-per-second home miner winning a $210,000 reward and another operator claiming a $200,000 payday via CKpool. Parasite Pool is the first at its scale to test a hybrid split model, aiming to keep participants engaged through the less successful periods. A third block within the next two months would significantly validate Parasite's approach, while a six-month drought might suggest the first two blocks were anomalies.