Solo Miner Achieves Rare Bitcoin Block Success Amid Rising Network Challenges
According to Cointelegraph, a solo Bitcoin miner achieved a remarkable feat by successfully mining a Bitcoin block on Sunday, earning a payout of 3.137 BTC, valued at approximately $371,000 at the time. The miner utilized the Solo CK pool, a platform designed for solo miners, to mine block 910,440. This accomplishment included the standard reward of 3.125 BTC along with approximately 0.012 BTC in transaction fees, totaling $1,455 from 4,913 transactions.
Despite the dominance of large-scale industrial mining operations in Bitcoin's hashrate, the likelihood of a solo miner successfully mining a block remains exceedingly low. However, with the use of efficient hardware, smaller miners can occasionally secure block rewards. Throughout this year, several solo miners with modest setups have managed to claim block rewards independently. Notably, one miner succeeded in February, while another earned $350,000 on July 4. On July 27, yet another solo miner achieved a block reward, collecting $373,000.
Samuel Li, the chief technology officer of ASICKey, a mining equipment company, explained to Cointelegraph that solo miners are not merely relying on luck but are benefiting from "powerful, efficient hardware." Li emphasized that modern mining equipment is designed to deliver substantial hashrates without the excessive power consumption associated with traditional miners. Nevertheless, the odds for solo miners remain largely unchanged, with solo mining still resembling a "lottery" unless one controls tens of petahashes per second (PH/s), which is the minimum required for a statistically significant chance of success within a reasonable timeframe. Li noted that a miner with one PH/s of hashpower has a 1 in 650,000 chance of solving a block every 10 minutes.
The increasing network difficulty has posed challenges even for established Bitcoin mining companies. These companies have experienced the effects of rising network difficulty and hashrate, compounded by a reduced block subsidy due to Bitcoin halving. Data from CryptoQuant indicates that the Bitcoin network's difficulty was at 129 trillion at the time of writing, nearing all-time highs. This trend of increasing difficulty has persisted over time. In response to heightened competition and challenges in the mining sector, large mining companies have diversified into areas such as artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC) to offset the shortfalls in their mining operations.
