Initially accessible to the general public, mining activity associated with the Bitcoin blockchain now involves the firepower of large publicly traded companies. This is a reality that some solo miners still manage to overcome to win a block and the reward promised to the winner.
Solo miner wins a block on the Bitcoin blockchain
Mining activity associated with Bitcoin’s Proof of Work blockchain ensures both its high security and the validation of its transactions. This operation is carried out by miners, who receive a reward when they solve one of its blocks, currently set at 3.125 BTC.
For many years, the difficulty of this process has required significant computing power. This is why publicly traded companies are increasingly establishing themselves as the giants of this sector, faced with a constantly increasing hashrate.
However, this reality does not prevent solo miners from regularly winning the resolution of one of these blocks in the face of seemingly overwhelming competition. This reality has once again been proven with the validation of block 910,440 mined on August 17.
Indeed, on the information sheet for this block available on the mempool.space website, it can be seen that the name of the miner involved differs from the traditional and ubiquitous Foundry USA, Antpool, and other F2 Pool names. And for good reason: it was obtained by a solo miner from the Solo CK pool.
A jackpot won with “powerful and efficient hardware”
The Solo CK mining pool is an anonymous structure “with no liability assumed in the event of a problem” specifically dedicated to registering solo miners. Its computing power remains variable, but it represented a dominance of 0.19% at its peak in 2025, recorded on July 28. In other words, the possibility of obtaining a block in this context seems closer to a lottery than a certainty. However, its track record on the mempool.space website shows positive results about once a month since the beginning of the year. The most recent was block 910,440 on August 17, with 3.137 BTC (3.125 BTC in rewards and 0.012 BTC in transaction fees).
Nevertheless, according to Samuel Li, chief technology officer at mining equipment company ASICKey, obtaining this block is not solely down to luck. He explains that this result requires, above all, “powerful and efficient hardware” in order to come out on top in this venture.
Solo mining is still mostly a lottery, unless you control tens of Petahashs per second (PH/s), which is realistically the bare minimum to have a measurable statistical chance of success within a reasonable time frame.
Samuel Li
According to his calculations, with a minimum computing power of 1 PH/s, a solo Bitcoin miner has a 1 in 650,000 chance of solving a block against the current competition. It therefore seems that these lone adventurers regularly defy the odds in their favor.
