Key Points
- A lone Bitcoin miner successfully solved a Bitcoin block, earning the full 3.125 Bitcoin (BTC) block reward.
- The miner’s success is significant due to the increasing difficulty and competitiveness of Bitcoin mining.
A solitary Bitcoin miner has defied the odds, successfully solving a Bitcoin block and earning the full 3.125 Bitcoin (BTC) block reward.
Details of the Achievement
On April 29, Con Kolivas, a software engineer and administrator from the solo mining pool ckpool, announced that a miner had solved the 282nd solo block in Bitcoin’s history.
He noted that the miner had a large hash rate of about 120PH (peta hashes) at the time, equivalent to approximately 0.12 EH (exa hashes), with an average of around 12PH over a week.
This is roughly 0.02% of the total network hash rate.
The reward for solving block 841,286 had recently been reduced from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC in the Bitcoin halving at block 840,000 on April 20.
This meant that the reward was worth around $200,000 at BTC prices at the time.
Why is this Significant?
Kolivas speculated that this large miner had either recently switched from pooled mining post-halving, likely due to no longer covering their electricity costs, for a chance at a solo block.
Alternatively, they may have been intermittently hashing/renting large amounts solo.
This achievement is notable because mining a valid block solo is an extremely rare event, often compared to winning the lottery.
It is so rare that it has only happened 282 times out of the approximately 841,300 blocks that have been produced since Bitcoin’s inception 14 years ago.
Mining BTC requires participants to use computational power to solve and add the next block to the network.
However, with the increase in the asset’s price, mining has surged in popularity, resulting in an increase in competitiveness and hash rate.
This means that it is nearly impossible to solve a block alone.
In March 2023, it was reported that a solo miner earned the entire 6.25 BTC reward for solving a block, but prices were much lower then, so the reward was around $150,000.
The most recent solo block was on April 5, just before the halving, when a solo miner solved block 837,814 with 7PH of hash rate, earning a reward of approximately $422,750 at the time.
The current average network hash rate is 618 EH/s (exa hashes per second), having reached a record high of 728 EH/s on April 23.
It has grown by more than 90% over the past 12 months, making the latest solo mining achievement even more extraordinary.