According to U.Today, a solo Bitcoin block was recently mined for the first time in over a decade. John Stefanopoulos, founder of FutureBit, announced that a single user managed to find a Bitcoin block using their own hardware. Stefanopoulos stated, 'This is the first solo block in over a decade to be found on a single device, running a full node, and submitting that block anonymously and independently with no third parties.' The block was discovered on an Apollo II full-node device, which was running the user's independent node and solo stratum server.
In Bitcoin's early days, it was possible to produce blocks with an ordinary personal computer. However, as more users joined the network, solo mining became increasingly difficult. Miners began joining pools to speed up the block generation process by collectively using their resources and sharing block rewards. Despite the efficiency of mining pools, there are ongoing concerns about the increasing centralization of these pools.
Given that Bitcoin's difficulty currently stands at 95 trillion, the odds of mining a solo block are extremely low. Producing a block can take years or even decades for a solo miner. Stephanopoulos noted that 'someone’s life just changed in the best way possible.' Following the most recent halving, Bitcoin's current block reward is 3.125 BTC, approximately $216,024. Recently, the price of Bitcoin surpassed the $69,000 level.
