An individual Ethereum miner who mined a full block hit the jackpot by receiving 170 ETH for his efforts. Converted to USD value, the reward equals approximately $540,000 (calculated at the time the block reward was mined).
beating the odds
Despite some people claiming that Ethereum mining (still have proof of work) is harmful to the environment, the process is still thriving, and even single individuals continue to make their own fortunes on their own. Trying to block.
One such example defied the odds earlier this week and earned 170 ETH for mining an entire block. Calculated at today’s prices, the cryptocurrency amount is approximately $480,000, while at the time of mining, the USD value is equivalent to $540,000. The reward is much higher than the per-block average reward of around 4 ETH.
The individual miner was working through 2Miners: Solo Pool. The latter is a relatively small organization, with 854 miners online and 1.5 Terahesh per second, meaning that the average miner contributes 1.85 gigahashes per second (GH/s).
Earlier this month, a single bitcoin miner beat the odds of 1 in 10,000 and received a block reward of 6.25 BTC. Interestingly, the probability of this happening was estimated to be just 0.000073%. The event took place in the Solo CK pool, while the reward was over $267,000 (according to the current price of bitcoin at the time).
Although the odds are extremely rare, the same thing happened a day later when another miner won a 6.25 BTC block reward. With only 116 TH/s, they were lucky enough to win the mining race and get around $270K worth of primary digital assets.
Proof of work mining should be banned
The two hegemonies in the cryptocurrency universe – bitcoin and ether – currently rely on proof-of-work mining consensus. However, this model has recently created a lot of controversy as many experts claim that it poses a major risk to the environment.
A few days ago, Eric Theden – Vice President of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) – joined the club. In his view, EU financial regulators should ban proof-of-work mining practices and encourage a proof-of-stake model, which is less energy-intensive.
It is worth noting that Ethereum is on track to upgrade the network to Ethereum 2.0 as the transition should take place this summer. After development, Vitalik Buterin’s cryptocurrency protocol will begin to use the proof-of-stake method and thus become more green-focused.
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