One in three million miracles: How independent miners mined a $340,000 Bitcoin block?

Written by: Luke, Mars Finance

In the Bitcoin network, built by billions of machines and processing hundreds of quintillions of calculations per second, an event that is statistically "impossible" occurred. Block height 912632 was successfully packed, and a reward worth over $340,000 did not flow to any large mining pool, but was completely captured by a node mining through the well-known independent mining service platform Solo CK Pool.

When this news spread along the "information superhighway" of the crypto world, it brought not just envy for the lucky ones, but a complex emotion mixed with wonder and nostalgia. It seems to be an unexpected victory of a workshop amid the tide of industrialization, a wildflower quietly blooming in the torrent of steel. In today's world of increasingly concentrated computing power, the ownership of this block, like a distant echo, pulls people's thoughts back to that simpler, purer, and more idealistic "Genesis Era."

The charm of this story lies in the low probability of its occurrence. To truly understand this, we must first measure the scale of this "miracle" with numbers.

The current Bitcoin network hashrate has remained above 600 EH/s for the past year. What does 1 EH/s mean? It is 10 to the power of 18 hashes per second, which equates to 100 billion billion calculations per second. The miner in question is likely using one or several top-tier ASIC mining machines. Taking the latest Bitmain Antminer S21 on the market as an example, its hashrate is approximately 200 TH/s (which is 200 trillion hashes per second).

Perform a simple calculation: (200 * 10^12) / (600 * 10^18) ≈ 0.00000033.

This means that within any given block cycle (approximately 10 minutes), the probability of successfully mining a block is about one in three million. Cryptocurrency thinker and educator Andreas M. Antonopoulos once tried to describe this difficulty with a metaphor: "It's like trying to find a specific atom somewhere in the entire solar system, and you have to find it within ten minutes."

However, the Bitcoin protocol has kept a glimmer of hope for this "impossible task."

The Afterglow of the Golden Age: From "One CPU One Vote" to Finney's Warm Breeze

Back in 2009, when Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin white paper, the consensus mechanism he envisioned was named "Proof-of-Work". Its core idea, as he stated in the mailing list, is to build a "CPU-based peer-to-peer system", realizing a decentralized vision of "one CPU, one vote".

In this "pastoral era", mining feels more like a game of intelligence and a social experiment. The legendary figure Hal Finney, who was the first person in the world to receive a Bitcoin transfer, tweeted a historically significant message on January 11, 2009: "Running bitcoin". He later recalled on the forum: "When I was the only person running the Bitcoin program besides Satoshi Nakamoto, my computer mined quite a few blocks in just a few days... but the noise of the fan and the overheating of the computer eventually made me turn it off. Looking back, I really wish I could have kept it running."

The "fan noise" that Finney was troubled by at the time now seems like a luxurious concern. Independent mining was the norm then, and it was the original intention of the protocol design. Every early believer who participated with a personal computer was a guardian of the network and a potential beneficiary. However, as the value of Bitcoin was discovered, this peaceful experiment quickly evolved into a silent "arms race."

The curtain of change was raised by a programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz - yes, the legendary figure who bought two pizzas for ten thousand bitcoins. In 2010, he was the first to realize that graphics processing units (GPUs) had hundreds of parallel processing cores, which greatly exceeded the efficiency of CPUs when executing Bitcoin's hashing algorithms. He successfully wrote the first GPU mining program, inadvertently opening the "Pandora's box" of specialized mining.

The introduction of GPUs quickly made CPU mining a thing of the past. What truly pushed this competition to the peak of industrialization was the birth of ASICs (Application-Specific Integrated Circuits). These chips are designed with the sole purpose of executing the SHA-256 algorithm for Bitcoin. Their emergence completely signaled the end of the personal computer mining era, raising the computational power threshold by tens of thousands of times.

The Era of Whales: The Rise of Mining Pools and the Choices of Individual Miners

The emergence of ASICs is like throwing tanks into the era of cold weapons. Huge capital began to flood in, and in areas where electricity is cheap, "mines" composed of thousands of ASIC mining machines sprang up. The roar of machines replaced the sound of Finney's fans, becoming the background sound of Bitcoin network's heartbeat.

In the face of such computational power barriers, individual miners with a small number of mining machines find that they may not be lucky enough to discover a block for several years. The extreme uncertainty of income has led to a crucial invention in the Bitcoin world - Mining Pool.

The logic of a mining pool is very simple: "Many hands make light work." It functions like an open alliance, allowing miners from around the world to connect their computing power to a common server. Everyone participates in "guessing the puzzle"; regardless of which machine in the alliance ultimately guesses the answer, the block rewards obtained will be distributed according to the proportion of computing power contributed by each member.

The data from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) shows that today over 95% of the global Bitcoin hash rate is concentrated in major mining pools such as Foundry USA and AntPool. Joining a mining pool means giving up the chance to earn the full block reward, the "jackpot," in exchange for a stable and predictable income based on "pay-for-work". This is a rational economic choice as it greatly smooths the earnings curve and reduces uncertainty.

At this point, independent mining (Solo Mining) has transformed from a normal practice into a nearly religious adherence.

Solo CK Deconstruction: The Thousands of Troops Behind a Name

When discussing the victory of this anonymous miner, one name keeps coming up, raising curiosity and questions: Solo CK Pool. On the block explorer, this name seems to frequently appear alongside "lucky blocks." This naturally leads to a core question: Who exactly is Solo CK? Is it an extremely lucky individual, or a large entity? Why does it mine so frequently, yet is considered a collective behavior of individuals?

On its official website, a prominent note reveals its essence: "Please note: Although the name contains 'Pool', it is not a mining pool; it is a service that allows miners to mine independently..."

This is the key point. Solo CK is not a cooperative in the traditional sense that pools computing power and shares rewards; it is more like a "gold mining service station." It provides the most advanced tools for those gold miners who want to "go solo" (eliminating the complex technical work of setting up and maintaining a Bitcoin full node), but the miners still operate independently. Its mechanism is open and transparent: anyone can anonymously point their mining machine to its server; miners use their own Bitcoin wallet address as the login "username." This means that when any miner using its services is fortunate enough to mine a block, the block reward goes directly into that miner's own wallet. The platform never handles this large sum of money and only takes a 2% service fee as a technical service charge.

Therefore, many blocks we see are marked with "Solo CK", which does not indicate that the same entity is winning continuously, but rather that hundreds or thousands of different, anonymous independent miners happen to be using the "tools" provided by this platform. The "Solo CK" label on the block explorer is more like a "brand certification", proving that another independent prospector using its services has found their own gold nugget in this vast digital wilderness.

Even if we understand its operating model, a deeper question arises that aligns with the spirit of the crypto world "Don't Trust, Verify": could this be a carefully designed disguise? Is it possible that a large mining pool is playing the role of Solo CK behind the scenes to create a false sense of decentralization?

This kind of skepticism is healthy, but multiple clues ranging from economic motives to technical evidence point to a negative answer.

First of all, the economic incentives are completely misaligned. The core business model of large mining pools is to pursue certainty by aggregating massive computing power to smooth out returns and earn stable service fees. Their existence is meant to eliminate the element of "luck." In contrast, the Solo CK model serves those miners who are willing to embrace extreme non-PWM certainty for a small chance of striking it rich. A large mining pool pretending to be a Solo CK is akin to an insurance company opening a casino, which is fundamentally contrary to its core business logic.

Secondly, on-chain data provides the most intuitive evidence. By tracking the block rewards "mined" by Solo CK, it is clear to see that these bitcoins were sent to a large number of different and unrelated wallet addresses. If there were a single entity behind it, we should observe these funds being systematically consolidated into a few addresses shortly afterward, but this did not happen. The subsequent flow of these funds exhibits characteristics that align with the decentralized and chaotic behavior of tens of thousands of independent individuals.

Finally, the reputation of the project provides corroborative evidence. The founder of the Solo CK Pool is Con Kolivas, a developer with a well-respected reputation in the tech community. His original intention for creating this platform was more out of a sense of technical idealism and support for ordinary miners, with the website clearly labeled as "not-for-profit" in nature.

Therefore, Solo CK frequently appears in the public eye, which is not a proof of centralization, but rather indicates that in today's environment of highly concentrated computing power, there are still a large number of determined individuals quietly engaged in a lonely yet great game of chance.

The ultimate victory of the law

When we clear away all the fog and look back at the success of block 912632, its significance becomes even clearer.

The victory of this anonymous miner is not just an isolated stroke of luck, but rather the highest praise for the Bitcoin underlying protocol's stability. The core of proof of work is not "the strong get stronger," but "probability fairness." The advantage of mining pools lies in their ability to roll billions of dice every second, while independent miners may only be able to roll a few times. However, the Bitcoin protocol has never deprived anyone of the right to roll the dice; as long as you follow the rules, every calculation is an equal attempt recognized by the network.

In January 2022, a miner with a hash rate of only 126 TH/s achieved the "miracle" of mining a block through Solo CK Pool, resonating with today's events. Together, they prove that no matter how tall the skyscrapers (giant mining farms and pools) built on the ground, the Bitcoin protocol remains an unshakeable cornerstone.

It declares to every potential participant: the doors of this system are still open to you, no matter how insignificant you may feel. As long as you are willing to contribute your work, you are an equal part of this network and will always retain the possibility of creating miracles.

This may be the most valuable insight brought by this block worth $340,000.