Hundreds of dollars turning into 260,000, independent miners frequently "win", is mining becoming a hot commodity again?

Original title: Solo Bitcoin Miners Are Winning More Blocks Lately—What Gives?

Original author: Mat Di Salvo, Decrypt

Original text compiled by: Lila,

Last week, an independent Bitcoin miner successfully packaged a block and received a reward of 3.125 bitcoins, with a total value of nearly $260,000 (including transaction fees). This is just one of several recent cases of independent miners hitting the jackpot.

So, is this miner just relying on luck? Is independent mining becoming more and more common? Can an ordinary person succeed in challenging those large mining companies with just a basic mining machine and insufficient hash power?

The answers vary. Although the number of times "independent miners" (here referring to individual enthusiasts or some low-profile mining small groups) successfully packaged blocks has indeed increased recently, the growth rate is limited and it is unlikely to surge significantly.

Scott Norris, the CEO of independent mining company Optiminer, stated frankly: Independent mining is still like "playing the lottery."

According to the data, the number of successful block packages through Solo CKPool (a service platform that allows anonymous users to mine without running a full node) was 7 times in 2022; increased to 12 times in 2023; and reached 16 times in 2024.

It is worth noting that Solo CKPool is not a traditional mining pool in the conventional sense. Although it has "Pool" in its name, it merely provides a point of access. Once a miner finds a block, they can take away the vast majority of the rewards themselves. However, this does not mean that the blocks mined through Solo CKPool are solely done by one person sitting in their bedroom with very low computing power. Some people on X have a significant misunderstanding about this, even promoting this viewpoint without any supporting data.

The current mining pool industry is still dominated by a few giants, such as Foundry, AntPool, and F2Pool. Miners typically connect to these large pools, share computing power, and distribute profits proportionally. However, miners connecting through Solo CKPool can keep almost all of the rewards for themselves.

As the Bitcoin network continues to develop, the computing power and resources required to find blocks are increasing. Therefore, most mining activities have long been industrialized, operated by publicly listed companies on a global scale. Some core Bitcoin proponents believe this is detrimental to Bitcoin's decentralization.

Nowadays, some amateur mining devices like Bitaxe and FutureBit Apollo, priced between $200 and $500, are favored by Bitcoin extremists. In January of this year, a FutureBit Apollo successfully mined a block—albeit under the condition that a non-profit organization donated hashing power to it. The anonymous miner Econoalchemist wrote on X at the time that the organization's goal was to "break proprietary mining empires and make Bitcoin and free technology accessible to everyone."

Although the probability of success is extremely low, it may be precisely because of the increase in the number of "amateur miners" that the success rate of individual mining has increased significantly. Econoalchemist notes that the trend towards success among independent miners has become increasingly evident in recent years. "Every once in a while (and it's getting more frequent), there's a little device, like Bitaxe, that quietly runs around the corner of a home and hits a block out of the blue," he said.

Optiminer's Norris added that it is also possible that some large institutions have mined blocks using their own computing power without connecting to large mining pools - superficially appearing "independent," but in reality, it is not an individual action.

Even the official website of Solo Satoshi, which is headquartered in Houston, Texas and sells mining equipment like the Bitaxe Gamma, states that using a Bitaxe miner priced at $180 with a hash rate of 1.2 TH/s, the probability of mining one block per day is only 0.00068390%.

But its founder Matt Howard stated that engaging in independent mining is not necessarily for profit. "The main goal is to promote decentralization. Finding blocks and earning Bitcoin is just a secondary reward," he said. "For Bitcoin extremists, mining must be decentralized."

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