Bitcoin solo miners have achieved remarkable success in securing block rewards, defying the competitive landscape of the cryptocurrency mining industry. Dr. Con Kolivas, a software engineer for Bitcoin CGMiner, has verified this trend. The latest achievement in this growing phenomenon occurred on Saturday, October 28, 2023, when a miner utilizing the Solo Ckpool platform secured the Bitcoin block reward for block 814,308, wielding a mere 11 petahash per second (PH/s) of hash power.
Solo Ckpool, a platform tailored for miners with less advanced hardware or lower hash rates, stands out by allowing miners to retain a substantial 99% of the reward upon discovering a block. This diverges from traditional mining pools, which distribute rewards evenly among all participants, offering more autonomy to individual miners.
The October milestone was not an anomaly. Earlier this year, there were multiple instances of solo mining success. In August, a miner, armed with just 1 PH/s of hash power, successfully solved block 803,821, reaping a $160,000 reward. Going back to June, a miner operating an older Bitmain S9 device, with a modest 17 terahash per second (TH/s), discovered block 793,607. In yet another instance, a miner wielding an impressive 1 exahash per second (EH/s) hashpower managed to mine two blocks in rapid succession without relying on the support of a large mining pool.
These achievements underscore the potential for individual miners to compete with the larger mining operations that traditionally dominate the industry. The appeal of solo mining pools lies in their unpredictability and independence, even in the face of high network difficulty. Mining a Bitcoin block is not solely about having substantial computational power; it often resembles winning a lottery, where luck plays a pivotal role in block discoveries.
The year has witnessed a steady increase in Bitcoin’s hashrate, peaking at 456 EH/s earlier this month before slightly receding to 443 EH/s. Despite the network difficulty reaching 62.46T, the average block time remains at approximately 8 minutes and 52 seconds. The mounting mining challenges and the fiercely competitive Bitcoin mining market have not discouraged these solo miners, who continue to secure substantial rewards.
