An individual Bitcoin miner has surpassed all expectations by successfully solving a Bitcoin block on their own, earning them the entire 3.125 Bitcoin block reward. The remarkable achievement was announced on April 29 by Con Kolivas, a software engineer and administrator from the solo mining pool ckpool. Kolivas stated that this solo miner had a substantial hash rate of approximately 120PH (peta hashes) at the time, which is equivalent to around 0.12 EH (exa hashes), with an average of about 12PH over a week, making up roughly 0.02% of the total network hash rate.
The reward for solving block 841,286 was recently reduced from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC during the Bitcoin halving event at block 840,000 on April 20. At the time, the reward was valued at approximately $200,000 based on BTC prices.
Upon examining the block-solve summary, Kolivas speculated that this large miner had either switched from pooled mining after the halving, possibly due to no longer covering their electricity costs, or had intermittently engaged in solo mining by hashing or renting significant amounts of computational power.
Mining Bitcoin solo and successfully solving a valid block is an extremely rare occurrence, comparable to winning the lottery. In fact, it has only happened 282 times out of the approximately 841,300 blocks produced throughout Bitcoin’s 14-year history.
Due to the increased popularity of Bitcoin mining driven by the rising price of the asset, the competition, known as difficulty, and the network’s hash rate have surged. As a result, it has become nearly impossible to solve a block on one’s own.
In March 2023, it was reported that another solo miner had earned the full 6.25 BTC reward for solving a block. However, the reward was valued at around $150,000 at the time due to lower BTC prices.
The most recent instance of a successful solo block was on April 5, a few weeks before the halving, when a solo miner solved block 837,814 with a hash rate of 7PH, 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 a more than 90% increase over the past year, making the latest solo mining accomplishment even more exceptional.