Bitcoin’s accounting history at block level 853742 shows that it was mined by a lone miner with only 3 th/s hashpower.
This milestone in the network, which was baptized as the “Bitaxe Genesis Block” for allegedly having been the first processed using the small-scale mining machine, demonstrates the power and importance of solo mining with domestic equipment.
A quick look at the historic block 853742 through mempool.space shows that it was processed six months ago, on July 24, 2024. The transactions included in said block, 4,353 in total, paid inclusion fees within a range of 4 – 260 sat/vB. As rewards, the miner who succeeded received 0.067 BTC in transactions, in addition to a block subsidy of 3,125the standard amount after the Bitcoin halving in 2024.
Mining solo with small scale mining equipment
As mempool.space demonstrates, said miner is affiliated with the Solo CK mining poola Bitcoin mining pool that allows its participants to mine individually using their own address and tag coinbase. This label reflects the number of bitcoins that entered the total supply of the currency once the block where they were “locked” was proposed by the winning miner and accepted by the rest of the nodes in the network.
Unlike other mining pools, such as Foundry USA or F2Pool, two of the most popular in the world, Solo CK miners do not divide block rewards among all their members. Not all mini miners should be put into solo mining, however. Depending on the brand, these can be connected to traditional pools where rewards are divided among contributors.
The lone miner was not overwhelmed by the odds
At the time, one of the developers of CK Pool congratulated the miner responsible for the milestone through his social networks for mining block number 290 in Solo CK Pool. This developer He assured that an event like that has a probability of 1 in 1.2 million.
Congratulations to the miner of the first Bitaxe block operating at 3 Th/s for finding the 290th solo block in the solo pool! This hash rate would only find a block once every 3,500 YEARS on average, or a 1 in 1.2 MILLION chance per day.
Dr. CK, administrator of solo.ckpool.org.
The surprise of the developer and the community was greater when they discovered in the records that said miner I had been mining solo with Bitaxe for only 19 days before the event. Incidentally, the lone miner dedicated to an entire Bitcoin block had increased his hash power to 3 Th/s just 24 hours before his lucky break.
The market offers a variety of mini Bitcoin ASICs
As reported by CriptoNoticias, at the time of writing there are mini Bitcoin miners with hash power significantly higher than the 3 terahashes per second of the traditional Bitaxe. Two models recently released to the market by the manufacturer Canaan, the Nano S3 and the Mini 3, They have a hashrate of 6 Th/s and 37.5 Th/s.
Probabilistically speaking, This last mini miner has 12.5 times more chance of mining a block than the Bitaxe used by the miner who found Bitcoin block 853742. The first of them, for its part, has twice the chance of finding a block than the one referred to in this article.
The market offers a variety of mini miners to mine bitcoin, some of them more minimalist and with lower hash power, but at a lower price. Certain Nerdminers, specifically the V2 model, have a hash power of 78 KH/s and a price of $43 at the time of writing.
What does the block 853742 event mean?
The event recorded in Bitcoin block 853742 demonstrates the importance and effect of small-scale mining with mini miners, even when the probability of finding a block is low.
From an economic point of view, mini miners open access to a larger and non-expert public to Bitcoin mining, which today is dominated by large companies with access to large resources. From a practical perspective, these small devices allow mining from the comfort of the home, without the need to dedicate space, facilities and high electrical consumption.
Mini miners also play a vital role in the decentralization of the Bitcoin network since they distribute the hashing power among more participants.
Since many people want to contribute their grain of sand, the motivation behind these mini miners is not only to try their luck and win a block subsidy, but to contribute a grain of sand to the Bitcoin network.
