A small-scale Bitcoin miner operating just a few ASIC devices has successfully validated a block via solo.ckpool.org, claiming the entire block reward. The event has reignited discussion about solo mining's viability in an industry dominated by massive pools and corporate miners.
Miner's Hashrate Only 1/130,000 of Top Public Miner
The miner used solo.ckpool.org, a pool launched in 2014 that charges a 2% fee and passes the full block reward (currently about 3.125 BTC) directly to the finder. Con Kolivas, CKpool's developer, shared the news on social media. He calculated that the miner's computational power gave it roughly a 1 in 28,000 chance of finding a block on any given day.
The setup could be assembled with a handful of consumer-grade ASIC miners — small enough for a home rig. This windfall did not come from a warehouse full of machines or cloud mining contracts but from a modest, possibly personal configuration. For perspective, publicly traded mining giant Riot Platforms operates at more than 30 EH/s, roughly 130,000 times the processing power used by this solo miner.
312th Solo Validation on CKpool; Only 20 Solo Blocks in Past Year
This is the 312th solo block validation on CKpool since inception. The pool had gone 33 days without a solo block since the previous one in late February. Over the past twelve months, solo pools collectively validated just 20 Bitcoin blocks, distributing 62.96 BTC in rewards. On average, a solo block is found about every 19 days across such pools, with the longest dry spell stretching 58 days.
Other Recent Solo Wins: Low Hashrate, Low Cost, Big Payouts
Though rare, similar solo successes have made headlines recently. In December, a miner running at 270 TH/s landed a block worth around $285,000 against long odds. In November, a miner with just a 6 TH/s legacy ASIC scored about $265,000 at staggering 180-million-to-1 odds. In late February, a rented rig providing 1 PH/s for a few hours at a cost of only $75 secured a block reward near $200,000.
Kolivas noted that such outcomes are mathematically possible within Bitcoin's reward structure, even if extremely improbable. He emphasized that these events — however infrequent — serve as evidence that home miners can still prevail amid the dominance of industrial-scale operations.