Simply put
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Block 903,883 was mined by a lone miner who earned a notable reward of $349,028.
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One expert suggests that this solo miner manages to solve a block roughly once every eight years, primarily due to having a limited hashrate.
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This solo miner’s hashrate accounted for only 0.000847% of the total hashrate of Foundry USA, the miner of the previous block.
Ding Ding Ding – We have a winner!
A solo miner managed to snag a reward of 3.173 BTC ($349,028) by successfully mining Bitcoin block number 903,883 late Thursday night. This is quite rare—an expert pointed out that, on average, miners like this one typically only see a win every eight years.
The lucky miner is associated with Solo CK, a non-profit service that allows Bitcoin miners to attempt solo mining. By using Solo CK, miners pay a 2% fee but don’t need to invest in a high-end mining rig.
“Congratulations to the 2.3ph minor BC1Q-9SJ3 for solving block number 301,” said Dr. CK, a pseudonymous software engineer and administrator of Solo CK. “Miners with this scale likely find success a few times a day, averaging around once every eight years.”
To give some perspective, 2.3ph—short for Petahash—translates to a tiny fraction of the total Bitcoin network, which has an estimated hashrate of 881.11 EH/s (Exahash). This solo miner’s hashrate is just 0.00026% compared to Foundry USA’s 271.7 EH/s, illustrating the vast difference in scale.
Bitcoin miners invest their computing power to solve complex problems and find a “nonce,” a number that meets Bitcoin’s difficulty criteria. This process allows new blocks to be added to the blockchain.
In return, miners earn newly generated Bitcoin along with transaction fees from the blocks they mine. This mining activity underpins the Proof of Work consensus mechanism.
However, the landscape has changed significantly. Gone are the days when enthusiasts could mine Bitcoin using regular household equipment; now, mining is highly industrialized, with companies contending for rewards through large-scale operations using warehouses full of specialized machines.
Competing against large firms for mining rewards as a solo miner can be daunting, making it exceedingly tough to hit the jackpot. Most solo miners often join pools to combine their efforts and share the rewards instead. Scott Norris, CEO of Independent Bitcoin Miner Optimer, likened solo mining to a lottery, despite the recent lucky win.
For context, Foundry USA, a mining pool based in the U.S., has amassed around 304,576 BTC ($32.8 billion) throughout its history. Since 2014, users of Solo CK have mined about 5,222 BTC, worth roughly $594.9 million today, mostly from infrequent wins rather than repeated successes from the same miner.
The last successful solo mining attempt before this latest win was four weeks ago, yielding 3.15 BTC, or about $330,300. Prior to that, there had been no successful solo mining for about three months.
As mining hashrates have generally increased since Bitcoin’s inception, solo mining has become more challenging. For example, the hashrate surged by 46% over the past year, escalating from 599.41 EH/s to 881 EH/s.
