Brainfart correction: It hasn't been 15 years, it's my 15th year in the space.
I'm often surprised by the reception I get to telling relatively old stories of bitcoin mining but I have to keep reminding myself how dynamic and ever-changing the landscape and audience is that has zero knowledge of the past.
The bitcoin audience lifecycle seems to be only about 18 months old, with a fresh batch of bright eyed enthusiastic people who are getting their information purely from social media these days. I also see the same kind of arguments rehashed on a regular basis as has been since day one - each debate being seen as some kind of existential threat when the vast majority of them are almost always a storm in a teacup.
The good thing is it's a sign there's always new bitcoiners in the space. The bad thing is the longer we're in the space, the less energy we have for arguing what we see as trivialities. Many of us (me included) have had painful interactions along the way which also makes us take a much more hands-off approach and/or lose enthusiasm for intense development on a scale we once did. Just remember that silence is not a sign we accept that we have lost a debate.
It's the two-edged sword of a truly consensus based protocol, but ultimately is a superpower since nothing ever progresses without endless debate, and leads to the best result for bitcoin.
It's now been just over 15 years since I first contributed patches to cpuminer as my entry into the bitcoin world. What a ride it's been, and it still feels like we're just getting started.
Why're they mining before the party starts?
Congratulations to miner bc1qyj7x3d64znz2jdn28k0fxl8pq4q39a3ke79sj3 with 2.3PH for solving block number 301 on the EU http://solo.ckpool.org!
A miner of this size has about a 1 in 2800 chance of solving a block every day, or once every 8 years on average.
https://mempool.space/block/000000000000000000004c918a929cb2710b5376dcdd89e719c521dc5255115c
A block party aiming for a combined total hashrate of 7EH on solo.ckpool.org is planned for this Saturday the 5th. It's being coordinated here https://upendo.rigly.io/
Bitcoin mining difficulty had its biggest drop in a very long time of 7.5% to ~117T. Still insanely high but won't last and will no doubt return to the same level as previously once the weather in Texas becomes inclement. It will also take less time to return to its former self.
It uses FROST - Flexible Round-Optimized
Schnorr Threshold Signatures.
Saturn captured on 2025-06-10 UTC. The rings are now just barely visible.
If it wasn't clear, I will continue to run core relay/mempool rules on the solo pools as I always have for all the technical reasons already outlined in a myriad of other places.
By all means feel free to run whatever client you feel is appropriate or mine wherever you like, but I implore you to read arguments instead of listening to them for the person delivering verbal messages can have more influence on your decision making than it can in text.
Saturn captured 2025-05-18.
Saturn captured this morning 2025-05-12. I've added a version with gamma applied which makes the very thin rings visible.
This is a great new multisig hardware wallet device one of the local bitdevs in our meetup has been working on and is coming out soon. Uses taproot and allows dynamic adding and removing signatures.
Congratulations to miner bc1~nnc5 with ~230TH for solving the 299th solo block mined at http://solo.ckpool.org! A miner of this size has about a 1 in 30,000 chance of finding a block each day.
https://mempool.space/block/000000000000000000003d9a1a59f93a992c0858d3d15627a87fe5649b76563e
Congratulations to miner bc1qq926qlrhc2pvxzc5f0zswnvqqddqqj3tz2amla with a sizeable 2.5PH/s for solving the first EU solo block and the 298th block at solo.ckpool.org!
https://mempool.space/block/000000000000000000005afed55b551d961220653a05daa8f362de2a384d8cea
A miner of this size has about a one in 2,000 chance if finding a block per day.
From the pool logs' worker name, which corresponds with the hashrate of a bitaxes.
Congratulations to a super lucky miner bc1qaxccz85rx6ywy2xw6ugtm6u37mvew6qqn7lgtd with only 3.3TH who solved the 297th solo block at https://solo.ckpool.org with a 480GH bitaxe!
https://mempool.space/block/000000000000000000006414aea39be567cf1d5ff6cbf2d77254fe7c714b0d81
A miner of this size has only less than a 1 in a million chance of finding a block per day, or put alternatively, would take 3500 years to find a block on average.
Re: http://eusolo.ckpool.org, sadly the anonymous individual who offered to fund the server's running has retracted their offer. This & the stats incident has confirmed my belief I should not rely on others. I will likely now fund it myself but will need to migrate the service.
Prove to me you don't understand why bitcoin and not shitcoins without saying you don't understand bitcoin...
What I run today is ckpool, mining pool software I wrote, in solo mining configuration as solo.ckpool.org