Parasite Mining Pool Strikes Gold Again with Second Bitcoin Block

A pioneering Bitcoin mining pool, Parasite Pool, has made history by mining its second block, block 945,601, on Friday morning, roughly 48 days after its first block at #938,713 in late February. This pool operates on a distinctive hybrid model, where the winning miner receives 1 BTC, and the remaining 2.125 BTC plus fees are proportionally distributed among all participants based on their shares submitted since the previous block. The block carried 7,398 transactions and 0.002 BTC in fees, with Bitcoin trading at $76,213 at the time. The pool's design aims to reject both the industrial pay-per-share model and the pure lottery approach, providing a unique opportunity for home miners to participate without incurring fees, with payouts routed through the Lightning Network. The mining process secures Bitcoin by having computers compete to solve a cryptographic puzzle every 10 minutes, with the winner earning the right to add the next block of transactions to the blockchain and collecting a reward. This reward is currently 3.125 BTC plus transaction fees, worth about $238,000 at Friday's price. The competition is dominated by industrial operators, but Parasite targets the home miner, offering a split-difference approach where the 1 BTC finder's fee preserves the lottery payday, while proportional distribution of the remainder keeps satoshis flowing to participants between blocks. With a hashrate currently sitting at 52 petahashes per second, down from a peak of 182 PH/s in June 2025, Parasite's model has been validated through two rounds of real-world testing, and a third block within the next two months would solidify its case.