In a remarkable turn of events on Monday, a solo Bitcoin miner defied the odds, solving a block and walking away with a remarkable $218,544 reward.
The miner, credited with block 841286, joins the exclusive ranks of solo miners in Bitcoin’s history, surpassing more than 841,000 blocks to achieve this significant milestone.
According to Con Kolivas, the lead developer of mining software provider CKpool, the miner maintained an average of 12 petahashes, equating to an astounding 1,000,000,000,000,000 hashes per second. This impressive computational power represents approximately 0.02% of the network’s total hash rate, underscoring the rarity of the achievement. With odds of just 0.02%, or around 1 in 5,000, the miner’s success stands as a testament to perseverance and strategic prowess in the competitive realm of Bitcoin mining.
Kolivas offered insights into the potential strategy behind the miner’s triumph, suggesting a recent transition from pooled mining post-halving or intermittent solo mining endeavors. The move to solo mining post-halving, driven perhaps by a desire to maximize returns, reflects the calculated risks undertaken by individual miners in pursuit of greater rewards, according to Decrypt.
This milestone marks the first block mined by a solo miner since the last Bitcoin halving, underscoring the inherent challenges associated with solo mining. Solo miners contend with formidable obstacles, including competing against the entire network’s hash rate and navigating fluctuating difficulty levels. As the network expands with more miners joining the fray, the odds of solo miners finding blocks diminish significantly.
In contrast to the collaborative approach of mining pools, where rewards are shared among participants, solo mining relies heavily on luck and individual computing power. The unpredictable nature of solo mining contrasts sharply with the stability and consistency offered by pool mining, where earnings are distributed more evenly among contributors.
Notably, the dominance of major mining pools, such as Antpool and Foundry USA, controlling nearly half of the Bitcoin network’s total hash rate, further underscores the uphill battle faced by solo miners. Despite these challenges, solo mining continues to attract determined individuals seeking to carve out their share of the Bitcoin rewards.
This remarkable feat follows a previous solo mining success on August 18, 2023, where a miner with a modest hash power of 1 petahash per second solved block 803,821, securing a reward of 6.25 Bitcoin, valued at approximately $160,000 at the time.
The achievement of this solo miner serves as a testament to the resilience and ingenuity within the Bitcoin mining community, highlighting the potential for substantial rewards amid the competitive landscape of cryptocurrency mining.
