On January 25, a solo Bitcoin (BTC) miner from CK mining pool (CKPool) successfully mined a new block on the Bitcoin blockchain from a block height of 720,175, earning a block reward of 6.25BTC worth over $220,000 at current prices.
By description, solo mining is validating blocks using a single mining rig. In this case, a solo miner attempt to validate blocks without teaming efforts with other miners on the mining pool or running a full blockchain node. Unfortunately, this type of mining becomes extremely unlikely without significant hashing capabilities.
Nonetheless, to maximize chances and avoid costs associated with solo mining, miners generally join in a pool to combine their hash power. The team jointly attempts to validate a block and ultimately share the proceeds if they succeed.
Buy Bitcoin NowAccording to a recent tweet from CKPool admin Con Kolivas, the successful solo miner had a hash power of approximately 86 terahashes per second. Although hash power determines the computational speed to perform cryptographic functions needed to validate a block for PoW-powered blockchains like Bitcoins, the successful solo CKPool miners had relatively less hash power than a single S9 mining machine. Remarkably, another solo miner from the same Solo CK mining pool completed a similar block validation task two weeks ago.
Founded in 2014, CKPool is an organization that allows Solo mining without dealing with the cost and troubles of running a full Bitcoin node.
