A solo Bitcoin miner just won block 718214 reward worth 6.25 $BTC

[aysg76]

This is not the only one incident of solo miner solving the puzzle and getting block rewards of 6.25 btc at this time where many big mining farms are your competitors and recently there was another that happened again :

Something strange has just happened:



This is a very unlikely event:

There are so many talks about them but the chances of this happening in actual is very rare but for some people might get confused that the solo miners have small setup but in actual he might be using some good hardwares that have helped him to be lucky.

But two cases in a row is indeed arousing some curiosity among members as well as miners also.

[fillippone]

But two cases in a row is indeed arousing some curiosity among members as well as miners also.

Indeed the CK solo pool is not actually a pool.
I don’t know if it a known thing, they have a support thread here on bitcointalk.

[∞ YH] solo.ckpool.org 2% fee solo mining 262 blocks solved!

Here instead, the list of the recently minted blocks:
https://btc.com/stats/pool/Solo%20CK

[buwaytress]

Now that's what I call a lucky winner. Didn't think the odds were THAT small actually (not that 1 in over a million is small) but I suppose this already pays out his cost, wonder how what his profit margin's been across all those 262 blocks found?

Anyone knows what the record is for solo block found with the most improbability (or lowest odds)?

[franky1]

But two cases in a row is indeed arousing some curiosity among members as well as miners also.

Indeed the CK solo pool is not actually a pool.
I don’t know if it a known thing, they have a support thread here on bitcointalk.

[∞ YH] solo.ckpool.org 2% fee solo mining 262 blocks solved!

Here instead, the list of the recently minted blocks:
https://btc.com/stats/pool/Solo%20CK

solo.ck is actualy a pool.

heres its own pool stats

https://solo.ckpool.org/pool/pool.status
{"runtime": 49662976, "lastupdate": 1642182397, "Users": 2050, "Workers": 13054, "Idle": 552, "Disconnected": 547}
{"hashrate1m": "30.3P", "hashrate5m": "30.4P", "hashrate15m": "30.8P", "hashrate1hr": "32.9P", "hashrate6hr": "25P", "hashrate1d": "28.6P", "hashrate7d": "27P"}
{"diff": 4.42, "accepted": 1078266779909, "rejected": 1765947892, "bestshare": 532446995741, "SPS1m": 232.0, "SPS5m": 234.0, "SPS15m": 234.0, "SPS1h": 233.0}

here it explains within the POOL there are 2050 users with about 5-6 asics on average each
also worth noting that the average actual hashrate breaksdown as being only 2thash each, so some people are using some very crappy old asics on CK solo pool

oh and one last point. dont rely on blockchain.info's "network hashrate" or things like the btc.com pool hashrates. as those numbers are based on math of (time,difficulty,blocks found) rather than actual hashrate provided by the pool direct (such as my link shows)
ck pool is averaging at like 1200% luck for its actual hashrate right now.
its actually performing at 30peta.. but its luck of block finds is as if its performing at the math of 360peta (network guess hashrate)
...
now again to explain.
each asic owner(user) is not forming its own blockheader and adjusting its own reward share to itself. being proper solo

instead the CK pool is managing the block headers and setting the reward share. where it gives itself 2% and the uses the coinbase as an extra-extra-nonce which each user has a coinbase address, thus giving each user on the pool a variety of nonce and extra nonce to work through that are not the same hash permutations as another user
(all pools do this extra-extra-nonce varience)

all pools are collective. and change a coinbase per user/asic to give each asic varied work compared to other users.
and in all pools, a winning hash is always found by one asic

all thats different is instead of CK taking 100% and in a separate later transactions split the reward over all users. ck takes 2% for himself and then lets the winning hash user get the 98%

[pooya87]

Indeed the CK solo pool is not actually a pool.

A mining pool is referred to a server where miners share the same work and get paid for their contribution. In CK pool (regardless of the name) the work is not shared, so it can't be called a mining pool. In a mining pool, all miners are working on the same exact block with the same exact coinbase.
In CK pool each miner is doing its own work on its own block with their own unique coinbase. CK pool is just providing a node and "header production" service!

[pinggoki]

I read about this earlier, it’s a once in a lifetime occurrence to be honest. The chances of a solo miner repeating this are miniscule. Congrats to this lucky pleb though, he had a very good day

Not a pleb anymore, that much bitcoin can easily turn someone's life around for better or for worse. I am not that good with technicals though so I don't get why they have this kind of reward in the first place. Can someone explain to me the technicals behind this stuff in a dumbed down fashion?

[fillippone]

In a mining pool, all miners are working on the same exact block with the same exact coinbase.

Are you sure about this?
I heard that the newer versions of stratum allow each miner some kind of flexibiliity

[franky1]

In a mining pool, all miners are working on the same exact block with the same exact coinbase.

Are you sure about this?
I heard that newer version of stratum allow each miner some kind of flexibiliity

there are only so many nonces, and (timestamp) extra-nonce
an average asic can run through these in seconds.
a pool needs to adjust coinbase data(extra-extra-nonce) to give more varied work over the ~many minutes of a block solve session. and do this for each asic.

a pool of say 13,000 asics will have 13,000 'new work' with different coinbase every few seconds, meaning over the average ~10min blocksolve session thats probably about 4million different 'work' with different coinbase extra-extra-nonce

each asic gets a basic template of their owners blockheader including owners address. so that there is some variance to the work they all do as a pool
EG if all asics didnt have one of the outputs different from other asics and the OP_Return started at 1 to a <large number> for all asics. they would all be doing the same work as each other at the same time(waste of time).

ckpool example:
COINBASE (Newly generated coins)        38HRDQeecdfQnCyrnLEtKJGnEsrLG3XUCt      6.14274623 BTC
                                                           1PKN98VN2z5gwSGZvGKS2bj8aADZBkyhkZ  0.12536216 BTC
                                                           OP_RETURN ?x?x?x?x?x?x?x?x?x                  0.00000000 BTC
and each few seconds. the pool changes op return for more variance to work on

in other pools, its the same thing, all thats different is the payout
COINBASE (Newly generated coins)        1PKN98VN2z5gwSGZvGKS2bj8aADZBkyhkZ  6.26810839 BTC
                                                           OP_RETURN ?x?x?x?x?x?x?x?x?x                  0.00000000 BTC
                                                           OP_RETURN ?x?x?x?x?x?x?x?x?x                  0.00000000 BTC

in pools that pay out to a pool owner only(later shared). their 'variance' in this example is instead of using a asics address as one output they use a random op return per asic(like an asic ID, unique to each asic). and then another op return as a an extra-extra-nonce to give that asic more work every few seconds

some pools just have one op return(small pools) and allot 1-> xtrillion to one asic. and then xtrillion -> x*xtrillion to another asic, within the range of the limit of how much entropy the op return allows(large number)
and if the pools asics work through all this variance then the pool can do different tricks by changing the transaction arrangements(order)

but in all cases. its not the asic or its user making these coinbase adjustments or blockheader hashs to then give the asic work to churn through. its the pool that is making these header/coinbase adjustments,
all thats different between usual pools and ck pool is the payout. ck gets 2% fee. and pays rest to one user. other pool gets 100% and pays out to all users

but they all work based on the data management done by the pool

[odolvlobo]

In a mining pool, all miners are working on the same exact block with the same exact coinbase.

Are you sure about this?
I heard that the newer versions of stratum allow each miner some kind of flexibiliity

You are referring to the BetterHash and Stratum V2 protocols that give the hashers more control over what transactions go into the blocks.

Regardless, whether or not the hashers are working on the same block with the same coinbase is irrelevant. The basis of a pool is that if anyone in the pool finds a block, everyone in the pool shares the reward. If that is not the case, then it can't be considered to be a pool.

[franky1]

solo.Ckpool
is "buzzworded" as solo. but not actually solo..
its configuration is not that the USER has to have a bitcoin node to look at its mempool and collate transactions into a block and create its own blockheader and coinbased rewarding itself. and then independently going through all the possible nonces, extra-nonces and extra-extra-nonces of its own solo block

instead ckpool:
collates the transactions and manages which asic gets which work.
sets the reward arrangement
deciding to only pay itself 2% and the wining asic 98% (instead of collecting 100% and later sharing to all asics)
ckpool does send new work for the block template ck pool creates.


ck pool users:
just need to connect their asic to ck pool with a username and password and start hashing

as the ckpool websote itself says:

Advantages over regular solo mining:
Mining at solo.ckpool.org avoids the overheads of running a full bitcoin node that requires both great storage and bandwidth for optimal performance.
Solo.ckpool.org is extensively connected to high speed low latency bitcoin nodes for rapid block change notification and propagation.
Unlike regular pools, ckpool never mines transaction-free blocks due to its ultra-scaleable code which has miners on both new blocks and transactions concurrently.

How it works:
ckpool automatically takes your bitcoin address and gives you a unique stratum connection mining to your own address.
If you find a block, 98% of the block reward + transaction fees get generated directly at your bitcoin address!
There is no need to worry about passwords, logins, withdrawals, authentication or pool wallet hacks.
You remain anonymous apart from your btc address.
You do not need to the following unless you wish to confirm the validity of the pool's behaviour:
All you need to confirm you are mining to your own address is to examine the coinbase and template sent to you over stratum.
Note that if you do not find a block, you get no reward at all with solo mining.
2% goes to 1PKN98VN2z5gwSGZvGKS2bj8aADZBkyhkZ to operate the pool and contribute to further ckpool code development.

its not solo because the 'stratum' is managed by the pool. not by the user
its not solo because that requires the user to have a bitcoin node to collate the transactions and create a template themselves.

the onlything 'solo' about it is the payout(if your luck) is 98% 'solo'
but the block template management is very much pooled

[Sithara007]

With the current exchange rates, it is like $270,000. I am not sure how much he/she might have spent on the mining equipment, but it should be lower by a magnitude of 100x-1,000x. So this reward is like hitting a lottery jackpot. LOL.. how this miner would have felt after coming to know about the reward? BTW, a few other factors might have contributed to his luck. China hashpower is completely wiped out due to hostile government action. And then there is the ongoing unrest in Kazakhstan, which has knocked out another 15% of the global mining contribution.

[DannyHamilton]

franky1 speaks very confidently about his opinion regarding ckpool, solo-mining, pool-mining, nonces, and extranonces.  Please do not mistake confidence for knowledge or understanding.  He's got some facts wrong, and his concept of what it means to be solo mining vs pools mining is not the widely accepted and understood concept.

[fillippone]

franky1 speaks very confidently about his opinion regarding ckpool, solo-mining, pool-mining, nonces, and extranonces.  Please do not mistake confidence for knowledge or understanding.  He's got some facts wrong, and his concept of what it means to be solo mining vs pools mining is not the widely accepted and understood concept.

As I am not a technical person about mining, could you please point those “facts wrong” and tell me the widely accepted concept of pools vs solo mining?
I just want to understand, no sarcasm.

[Welsh]

With the current exchange rates, it is like $270,000. I am not sure how much he/she might have spent on the mining equipment, but it should be lower by a magnitude of 100x-1,000x. So this reward is like hitting a lottery jackpot. LOL.. how this miner would have felt after coming to know about the reward? BTW, a few other factors might have contributed to his luck. China hashpower is completely wiped out due to hostile government action. And then there is the ongoing unrest in Kazakhstan, which has knocked out another 15% of the global mining contribution.

Difficulty adjusts based on the amount of hashrate though. So, while these might have effected things temporarily, don't mistake this for permanently making it easier to mine a block. Its an incredible feat to be able to mine a solo block these days even with the issues you mentioned.

Depending on this persons situation this could either mean a nice retirement fund or a ways of investing more. Either way, I wouldn't mind waking up to that figure.

People are making this out to be some kind of miracle, but it is not.

Consider the Powerball lottery. The odds of winning it are 1 in 300,000,000, yet somebody always seems to win. That's because of the number of people that enter.

It's all relative. Since, while yeah winning the lottery is expected every few weeks, that's because of the sheer amount of people that enter, and the point your making is definitely valid i.e the amount of miners mining, this sort of thing is expected from time to time. However, its still a pretty nice return on the mining equipment you invested in, so while this isn't a miracle in statistical terms, this could be a life changing amount of money depending on who actually mined it.

[PrimeNumber7]

People are making this out to be some kind of miracle, but it is not.

Consider the Powerball lottery. The odds of winning it are 1 in 300,000,000, yet somebody always seems to win. That's because of the number of people that enter.

It all comes down to math. So let's do the math.

It is mathematically expected for solo miners to occasionally find blocks. Like someone winning the Powerball, even if it is expected that someone will eventually win, people still like to talk about the Powerball winner.

While I am sure the person using the ~$11k miner is happy they were able to get a ~$262k payout, it is -EV for a miner to mine if the expected number of blocks they will find every frequency that the difficulty increases is less than 1.

For example, if a miner expects to find 0.2 blocks every two weeks, and for the difficulty to increase by 10% every two weeks, if they mine via a pool, they will get approximately 0.2 blocks worth of revenue for the current two week period, and if they are solo mining, they will expect to not receive any revenue during that two week period. Since the difficulty is increasing, the solo miner would not expect to find a block until after the difficulty changes 7 times. After that, they would not expect to find another block for over a year.

[franky1]

He's got some facts wrong

yes please correct me
show me how a ck pool is not a thing. and how users of CK are not pooled, but are all full node users collating transactions into blocks independently to create their own individual blockhash to send only to their own miner

if you think im wrong. explain it.
just explain it without the social drama or your 'confident opinion',
just show some stats or quotes from the service. explaining how users are their own independent block creators, without a pool manager doing the collating and blockheader organising of extra nonce/coinbase

funny how you wish to pretend im wrong by saying the crypto industry has has not yet set accepted concept widely

solo mining vs pools mining is not the widely accepted and understood concept.

im sorry to inform you that solo mining* pretty much stopped for bitcoin in 2011-12 when GPU's miners really started to join pools. and then even more so when asics dominated the pools 2013+.

for 8 years now solo mining* has not been a thing on the bitcoin network.

yep solo mining* is a widely understood concept. and trying to pretend it isnt by you setting a new narrative in 2022 just to say "franky wrong" wont defeat the concept of solo mining that has been known about since 2009+
.. but do try to explain where i am actually wrong.
oh and dont confuse solo rewarding(economic buzzword) with solo mining(technical concept)*

*(widely accepted concept 2009-2012+)
solo mining(technical concept of transaction collating and block formation by the user to have their own unique hash to work on without a pool manager doing it for them)

so please show me where ck pool is not collating the transaction data and forming templates and adding in the coinbase to create the hash. and show me where the requirement is of users doing all the transaction data and coinbase creation stuff

[pooya87]

yes please correct me
show me ~ how users of CK are not pooled,

I already did.

*(widely accepted concept 2009-2012+)
solo mining(technical concept of transaction collating and block formation by the user to have their own unique hash to work on without a pool manager doing it for them)

The definition of solo mining is someone who isn't sharing/pooling the "work". Whether or not they run their own node isn't changing that.
However, you can and should criticize that these miners are not independent since they don't run their own node and rely on a third party.

[leea-1334]

Just arrived here because of the title,,, and now I am reading the latest discussions saying this guy is not one guy but many people,,, but at the same time it is a solo miner?

So it is like saying, instead of 10 football teams trying to form a league, it is only one football team that also has 23 people on the squad.

A solo team.

I got this right, right?

[DannyHamilton]

I got this right, right?

Perhaps a better analogy would be tip pooling in a restaurant.

Scenario 1 (early days of solo mining):
Restaurant only accepts cash.  All waitstaff are tipped with cash.  Tips are paid directly from the customer to the person waiting on their table. Waitstaff keep their own tips and don't share them with any of the other waitstaff No pooling is happening. Lots of people are working, and sometimes they get a tip from a customer, but they don't share those tips with any of the others that are also working.

Scenario 2 (early days of mining pools):
Restaurant switches to exclusively accepting credit cards. Since restaurant handles payment processing, they end up with all the tips. Restaurant pools the tips together and then distributes them to the waitstaff on payday based on how much time each spent working during that pay period, regardless of how much tips any single employee did or didn't bring in. Now the entire restaurant is acting like a single pool. Everyone gets a share of the tips, even if the. customers that they themselves waited on never tipped.

Scenario 3 (ckpool):
Restaurant still exclusively accepting credit card, and still handling payment processing. Instead of distributing the tips based on how much time each employee spent working during that period, the restaurant keeps track of exactly which tips were paid for which employee.  On payday each employee receives ONLY the tips that were paid by customers whose tables they waited on. Restaurant keeps 2% of the tips from each employee to pay for handling the payment processing and distribution of funds. Like Scenario 1, you only get the tips that were paid by your customers, but like Scenario 2, all funds and payment processing are being managed by the restaurant.

Would you call Scenario 3 "tip pooling"?  One answer might be, no, because each employee only got the tips that were paid to them from the customers, and didn't share in the tips that any other employee received.  Another answer might be, yes, because the restaurant handled the payment processing and kept a bit of the tips for themselves.  This is where the confusion arises. Since ckpool is creating the blockheaders, and is keeping a piece of the earnings for themselves, some people are saying it is not "solo mining".  On the other hand, since the miner receives only the rewards from the blocks that they themselves find the solution for (and don't participate in any rewards from any blocks that anyone else finds the solution for), most people are calling this "solo mining".

As pooya87 has pointed out, the widely accepted definition of "solo mining" is someone that is not pooling the work. If the only way you get paid is when you yourself (or the equipment that you are running) solve a block, then it's generally understood that you are solo mining (regardless of who is creating the block headers that you are working on).  If you get paid for every share of work that you complete (regardless of whether you ever find a block solution yourself), then it's generally understood that you are not solo mining.

In ckpool, as a solo miner, your odds of solving a block, and of therefore getting paid at all, can be calculated based entirely on the ratio of the hash power that you personally have control over vs. the current target difficulty.  This is exactly the same as it is for a solo miner that is creating their own blockheaders.  If you participate in a pool where you are not solo mining, then the odds of a block being solved by the pool can be calculated based on the sum of all the hash power contributed by all the pool participants vs. the current target difficulty.  You therefore get paid much more frequently (albeit a much smaller reward since all the participants in the pool are sharing that reward based on the amount of hash power each contributed).

[franky1]

The definition of solo mining is someone who isn't sharing/pooling the "work". Whether or not they run their own node isn't changing that.

no two asics ever do the same work on any pool or any pool.
because thats just inefficient

its about who manages what work each asic should do. who collates the blocks to create the work to be done

analogy:
if you own a cleaning company. and there is 5 different toilets under your management and contract. and you direct the cleaners what to clean..
you dont send all cleaners to clean one toilet. you as a cleaning manager(pool) send one cleaner to each toilet and scrub each toilet until they are all clean

a solo cleaner chooses her own toilets to clean and cleans as many as she can without a manager telling her anything about a toilet

ckpool (hints in the name) do direct asics on what work to do. the asics dont have their own bitcoin node to collate data. they need to be managed and told what work to do.


.. gotta laugh at danny
waitress scenario.. he talks about the reward. not the work
funny part is in all three waitress scenarios.. he talks about a waitress that has a restaurant boss..

scenario 1(old solo, concept accepted for over a decade) should be
a restaurant owner also cleans and serves the tables. he works for no one he is the solo owner and worker of the restaurant, he decides what work to do, no one tells him. he keeps all the tips

scenario 2(early pools, concept accepted for over a decade) should be
a restaurant has several workers. the restaurant owner sets the work for them and he takes the tips. and evenly splits the tips at the end of the month to whomever worked based on their share of work, even if they were not personally tipped

scenario 3(ck pool) should be
a restaurant has several workers. the restaurant owner sets the work for them, but they only get paid in tips, and if they work a table and get a tip they keep 98% of the tip.

..
solo MINING emphasises the work. and who manages the work. its not about the reward.
ck pool is a 98% reward POOL. not a solo managed local independent miner