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On Friday, the battle to add block 772,793 to the Bitcoin blockchain was won by a solo Bitcoin miner with an average hash rate of just 10 TH/s (terahashes per second).
Since Bitcoin’s total hash rate at the time the block was added was just over 269 exhashes per second, the unique miner’s hash rate of 10 TH/s only accounted for 0.000000037% of the power. computing used to create the blockchain.
Bottom line: It was a highly unlikely win for a single miner.
The lone miner was the first to generate a legitimate hash to mine the block despite the odds being stacked against him. 98% of the total 6.35939231 BTC authorized for the block reward and fees went to the miner as compensation. The remaining 2% was sent to the Solo CK Pool, an online mining platform that allows solo mining.
Randomness and probability in Bitcoin are connected for good fortune and work
The miner must calculate a valid hash for a block before it can be added to a proof-of-work blockchain like Bitcoin. This hash can only be found through brute force computation.
Mining equipment uses an encryption technique to create hashes that are below a threshold defined by the network. If the method returns a value that is higher than the desired hash, the miner reruns the algorithm with slightly different input to get a completely new hash value. Miners specifically designed to carry out this task can compute trillions of different hashes every second.
In theory, the initial output of the algorithm could be a valid hash to solve the block, even if a miner’s system could only generate one hash per second.
How many to one?
The number of hashes that a miner’s platform computes every second relative to the total number of hashes that all computers on the network compute per second determines the probability that a solo miner will add a block.
Less than an hour after block 772,793 was solved, user Willi9974 posted on the bitcointalk forum that the lucky lone miner had an average hash rate over the previous hour of 10.6 TH/s.
According to information shared on BitcoinTalk, the 10 TH/s represented the combined power of four machines (called “workers”). This means that the mining rig used by this lone miner consisted of four USB stick Bitcoin miners, which have a hash rate of about 3 TH/s and cost around $200 each.
It is possible to determine the estimated total hash rate of 269,082,950 TH/s at the time the block was solved using the difficulty level mentioned in block 772,793 and assuming that the solo miner setup was processing 10 TH/s. s.
As a result, there is a one in 26.9 million chance that this lone miner will be the first to solve the block with a legitimate hash. According to statistics, this indicates that the lone miner would add the block on average 0.000000037% of the time if the identical conditions were repeated an unlimited number of times.
Although unlikely, it is not unheard of, and similar events have occurred.
Although this scenario was incredibly unusual, “once-in-a-lifetime” incidents comparable to this have occurred before in bitcoin mining.
Three different individual miners solved blocks with unlikely hash rates in less than two weeks a year ago; The third-party hash rate was reportedly only 8.3 TH/s compared to the overall estimated hash rate of 190,719,350 TH/s, which translates to a one in 23 million chance (or 0.000000044%).
Either a hash is legitimate and breaks the block, or it is invalid. Since the entire system depends on random hashing and network response mechanisms to preserve fundamental probabilities, there is no strategy at play. Since Bitcoin is based on code and mathematical formulas, it is entirely possible for a single miner to solve the next four blocks.
Mining pools are still the winners
These kinds of anecdotes about lone miners can end up inspiring the ever-optimistic to take up a new hobby. However, huge groups of mining rigs pooling their hashing power and dividing the profits produced the vast majority of blocks uploaded to the Bitcoin network lately.
By doing this, every time the pool mines a block, each miner’s contribution is recognized proportionally.
The largest Bitcoin mining pool at the moment, according to blockchain explorer and mining pool BTC.com, is Foundry USA, with a total computing power of 90.19 EH/s, or 31.3% of the total network hash rate. This means that they typically receive a share of the block rewards and fees for one out of every three blocks.
Since their inception in 2010, mining pools have continuously expanded their share of the hash rate distribution as technology and mining difficulty advance. At least 98% of Bitcoin miners active online today participate in mining pools.
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