The miner was the only one to validate the block, leading to the reward
Against all odds, a lone Bitcoin miner has successfully solved a Bitcoin block, earning the entire block reward of 3.125Â Bitcoin. At today’s price, that’s around $196,000.
Congratulations to miner 365ughTgK9Q7rXXTM7vubqy1awZ2AZJijP for solving the 282nd solo block solved at https://t.co/UWgBvLkDqc with a large ~120PH at the time (12PH average over a week) https://t.co/btUXBoC8Yd pic.twitter.com/yh0VkuAI5b
— Dr -ck (@ckpooldev) April 28, 2024
On April 28, Con Kolivas, a software engineer and administrator from the solo mining pool “ckpool,” shared on X that a miner had successfully solved the 282nd solo block in Bitcoin’s history. Kolivas added that the individual miner operated with a substantial hash rate of approximately 120 petahashes per second (PH/s) at that time, equivalent to roughly 0.12 exahashes per second (EH/s). The miner’s average hash rate over seven days was about 12 PH/s, making up about 0.02% of the overall network hash rate.
The reward followed soon after the latest change in the Bitcoin blockchain. On April 20, the long-awaited Bitcoin halving occurred at block 840,000. That reduced the block reward from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.Â
After examining the block-solve summary, Kolivas determined that the miner recently switched from pooled mining after the halving “presumably for no longer recouping their electricity costs” for the prospect of a solo block or had been “intermittently hashing/renting large amounts solo.”
The rarity of mining a valid block solo is almost like winning the lottery. In the 14 years since Bitcoin’s inception, only 282 of the 841,300 blocks have been mined solo. The previous solo-mined block was before the halving on April 5, when an individual miner solved block 837,814 with a hash rate of 7 PH/s for a reward of about $422,750 at the time.
