2024-05-01
A single Bitcoin miner has achieved an impressive feat by successfully solving a Bitcoin block on their own.
This accomplishment earned them the full block reward of 3.125 Bitcoin, equivalent to around $200,000 at the time.
The single miner, who was part of the ckpool solo mining pool, made this announcement on April 28. The miner had solved the 282nd solo block in Bitcoin's history.
At the time, their hash rate was approximately 120 petahashes per second (PH/s), which is equivalent to around 0.12 exahashes per second (EH/s).
Over the course of a week, their average hash rate was around 12 PH/s, accounting for roughly 0.02% of the total network hash rate.
It is worth noting that the Bitcoin block reward was recently reduced from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC during the Bitcoin halving event that occurred at block 840,000 on April 20.
Therefore, the block that the single miner validated, block 841,286, was valued at approximately $200,000.
Upon analyzing the block-solve summary, Con Kolivas, a software engineer and administrator from ckpool, speculated that the miner had switched from pooled mining after the halving.
This switch was likely motivated by the miner's inability to recoup their electricity costs. Alternatively, the miner may have intermittently rented a significant amount of hashing power to mine solo.
This achievement is remarkable because successfully mining a valid block solo is an exceedingly rare occurrence, comparable to winning the lottery.
In fact, since Bitcoin's inception 14 years ago, there have only been 282 instances of single block mining out of the 841,300 blocks produced.
Bitcoin mining involves participants contributing computational power to solve and add the next block to the network.
However, the increasing popularity of mining, coupled with the rising price of Bitcoin, has led to heightened competition and a higher network hash rate.
Consequently, it has become nearly impossible to solve a block individually.
In March 2023, a similar single mining success, where a miner earned the entire 6.25 BTC reward for solving a block.
However, the value of Bitcoin was much lower at that time, resulting in a reward of approximately $150,000.
The most recent solo-mined block occurred on April 5, a few weeks before the halving.
During this instance, a single miner with a hash rate of 7 PH/s successfully solved block 837,814, earning a reward of approximately $422,750.
Currently, the average network hash rate stands at 618 EH/s, reaching an all-time high of 728 EH/s on April 23, according to BitinfoCharts.
This represents an increase of over 90% in the past year, making the latest solo mining accomplishment even more extraordinary.
