Ocean Mining experiences {that a} small, $500 application-specific built-in circuit (ASIC) Nerdminer, buzzing alongside at about 5 terahash per second (TH/s), managed to hit a block — a feat that may usually demand a wait of greater than 3,500 years.
DATUM-Pushed Child Nerdminer Stuns Community by Beating 960 EH/s Odds
On social media, folks have been discussing how a small miner struck a block by way of Ocean Mining’s solo setup and the DATUM (Decentralized Various Templates for Common Mining) protocol.
The system connects mining {hardware} with a Bitcoin full node — on this occasion, Start9labs infrastructure — enabling direct block submission and directions with none intermediary oversight.
On X, Ocean Mining posted:
Block 913272 was discovered yesterday by a small miner: @snednode revealed that it was him, utilizing a QAxe++, a Start9labs and DATUM on OCEAN. Seeing miners of all sizes have their voices heard by mining their very own blocks and seeing decentralization occur in actual time is why we do that.
A Nerdminer QAxe++ runs at roughly 4.8 terahash per second (TH/s) whereas drawing about 72 to 76 watts from the wall. It makes use of the identical semiconductors present in Bitmain’s Antminer S21 Professional sequence, although the S21 Professional cranks out about 229 TH/s greater than the QAxe++.
The VP of Improvement and Engineering at Ocean Mining reported that the miner disclosed it was a QAxe++ miner.
If mixed in a pool, this hashrate may generate about $0.26 a day in revenue at an working expense of roughly 0.04 per kilowatt hour (kWh). Nonetheless, many swimming pools implement strict minimal hashrate thresholds, pushing small miners towards swimming pools that don’t set such necessities.
Swimming pools corresponding to Ocean and Solo CKPool don’t impose a proper minimal hashrate to take part, they usually’re constructed particularly for miners aiming to go solo, but in addition pool hash as nicely. Nonetheless, with very low hashrates (under 100 GH/s or 0.1 TH/s), the prospect of discovering a block turns into successfully zero at these ranges.
And even 5 TH/s is extraordinarily troublesome. To place the percentages in perspective, the worldwide Bitcoin community’s hashrate stood at roughly 960 exahash per second (EH/s) when block 913272 was found. A 5 TH/s Nerdminer employee represents simply 0.0000000052% of that whole. On the present problem of 136.04 trillion, discovering a sound block requires about 5.84×10²³ guesses.
At 5 trillion guesses per second, it might take that miner round 3,700 years to discover a block on common. Statistically, the prospect of hitting even one block in a full 12 months is about 1 in 3,700. In a single day, it’s nearer to 1 in 1.35 million.
But, in opposition to all these astronomical odds, this child ASIC machine obtained fortunate and located the golden hash—proof that whereas solo mining with low hashrate is like taking part in the lottery with quantum cube, generally even the smallest gamers can hit the jackpot. In the meantime, with the OPEX of electrical energy and a $500 preliminary buy, this fortunate miner was in a position to rating 3.134 BTC valued at $347,968 at the moment.
This isn’t the primary occasion of such outrageous luck. In July 2024, Solo CKPool’s developer, generally known as Dr -ck, shared {that a} 3 TH/s Bitaxe, one other child miner, managed to hit the pool’s 290th solo block. “This a lot hashrate solely would discover a block as soon as each 3500 YEARS on common, or 1 in 1.2 MILLION probability per day,” the Solo CKPool dev defined on the time.
