A solo Bitcoin miner has defied the odds by solving a block alone, earning the full 3.125 BTC block reward. The miner, who is part of the solo mining pool ckpool, was announced by software engineer and administrator Con Kolivas on X on April 28.
TLDR
- A solo Bitcoin miner has defied the odds by solving a block alone, earning the full 3.125 BTC block reward.
- The miner had a hash rate of around 120 PH/s at the time, equal to about 0.12 EH/s, and averaged around 12 PH/s over a week.
- The Bitcoin block reward was recently reduced from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC in the Bitcoin halving at block 840,000 on April 20.
- Solo mining a valid block is an extremely rare event, occurring only 282 times out of the 841,300 blocks produced since Bitcoin’s inception.
- The increasing price of Bitcoin has led to a rise in mining popularity, resulting in increased difficulty and hash rate, making it nearly impossible to solve a block alone.
The solo miner had a substantial hash rate of approximately 120 petahashes per second (PH/s) at the time, which translates to around 0.12 exahashes per second (EH/s). Over the course of a week, the miner averaged about 12 PH/s, representing roughly 0.02% of the total network hash rate.
Congratulations to miner 365ughTgK9Q7rXXTM7vubqy1awZ2AZJijP for solving the 282nd solo block solved at https://t.co/UWgBvLkDqc with a large ~120PH at the time (12PH average over a week) https://t.co/btUXBoC8Yd pic.twitter.com/yh0VkuAI5b
— Dr -ck (@ckpooldev) April 28, 2024
This achievement is particularly significant because the Bitcoin block reward was recently reduced from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC during the Bitcoin halving at block 840,000 on April 20. The solo miner’s success came at block 841,286, which was worth around $200,000 at the time, based on the prevailing Bitcoin prices.
Kolivas examined the block-solve summary and speculated on the circumstances surrounding the miner’s accomplishment.
He suggested that the large miner might have recently switched from pooled mining after the halving, possibly because they were no longer able to recoup their electricity costs. Alternatively, the miner could have been intermittently hashing or renting large amounts of computing power for solo mining.
Solo mining a valid block is an extremely rare event, comparable to winning the lottery. Out of the approximately 841,300 blocks produced since Bitcoin’s inception 14 years ago, this has only occurred 282 times.
The rarity of this achievement is due to the increasing popularity of Bitcoin mining, which has led to a rise in both the difficulty and the hash rate of the network.
Mining Bitcoin involves participants using computational power to solve complex mathematical problems and add the next block to the network.
As the price of Bitcoin has increased over time, more people have been attracted to mining, resulting in greater competition and a higher overall hash rate. Consequently, the likelihood of a solo miner solving a block has become exceedingly low.
The most recent solo-mined block prior to this one was on April 5, just a couple of weeks before the halving. In that instance, a solo miner solved block 837,814 with 7 PH/s of hash rate, earning a reward of around $422,750 at the time.
The average network hash rate is currently 618 EH/s, having reached an all-time high of 728 EH/s on April 23, according to BitInfoCharts.
This represents an increase of more than 90% over the past 12 months, further emphasizing the exceptional nature of the latest solo mining achievement.
