Key Points
- A Bitcoin miner has single-handedly processed a block, a rare event in the industry.
- The miner, part of the Solo CK mining pool, mined a block containing 5,935 transactions with a reward of 3.169 Bitcoin.
A miner of Bitcoin has created a buzz in the cryptocurrency industry after processing a block single-handedly. This is an uncommon occurrence in the Bitcoin mining sector, which is typically dominated by large mining pools such as Bit Digital, Riot Blockchain, and Marathon Digital.
Defying High Hashrate
Bitcoin block explorer Mempool.space reported that Solo CK, a mining pool that amalgamates the hashrate of several smaller miners, mined Block 860749 on September 10. This block contained 5,935 transactions and awarded a reward of 3.169 Bitcoin, approximately $182,505.
Though the achievement was under the mining pool, only the miner who solved the block receives the reward. This is the prize that large mining companies compete for. In this instance, the miner used 629 petahashes of hashrate to completely process the block, which is 0.098% of the total power securing the blockchain.
Data from Bitcoin transaction tracker YCharts showed that the transaction registered at 644.91 exahashes per second (EH/s). This happened less than two weeks after the Bitcoin hashrate reached a new all-time-high (ATH) of 742 EH/s, a 62% increase from the hashrate a year ago which was at 395.70 EH/s.
The Impact of Solo CK’s Individual Miners
Solo CK has achieved other blocks in the past year, earning it 59.3 Bitcoin, currently valued at $3.4 million. On August 30, a miner from this pool received around $200,000 for processing a block. Another Solo CK miner solved block 853,742 and received $210,000 for their efforts.
After the April 20 halving event, Bitcoin mining difficulty reached a new peak, adding more than 2 trillion to hit 88.1 trillion. This made it harder for many miners to earn the entire block reward alone. However, an individual miner from Solo CK managed to mine Bitcoin block 841286 entirely, earning a total reward of 3.43 BTC. The miner had a total hash rate of about 4.4 EH/s and earned 5,460 coins.
Mining difficulty is a measure of how challenging it is to mine a new block. An increase in the number of miners usually leads to an increase in Bitcoin mining difficulty due to increased competition to find new blocks. Conversely, if the number of miners decreases, difficulty also decreases, making it easier for miners to discover new blocks.
