A single Ethereum miner who mined a full block and hit the jackpot by receiving 170 ETH for his efforts. Converted into USD value, the reward is equivalent to almost $ 540.000 (calculated on the quotation at the time the block reward was mined).
Beat the odds
While some people argue that Ethereum mining (still being proof-of-work) is harmful to the environment, the process is still thriving, and even individuals are constantly trying their luck to mine blocks on their own.
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 around $ 480.000, while at the time of mining, the dollar value was $ 540.000. The reward significantly exceeds the average reward per block by around 4 ETH.
The single miner was operating through the 2Miners pool: Only pool. The latter is a relatively small organization, made up of 854 online miners and 1,5 terahashes per second, which means that the average miner contributes 1,85 gigahashes per second (GH / s).
Earlier this month, a single bitcoin miner beat 1 in 10.000 odds and received a block reward of 6,25 BTC. Interestingly, the odds of this happening have been estimated at a mere 0,000073%. The event occurred at the Solo CK pool, while the reward was worth over $ 267.000 (going from the current bitcoin price back then).
While the chances are extremely rare, the same thing happened a day later when another individual miner pocketed the block reward of 6,25 BTC. At just 116 TH / s, they were lucky enough to win the mining contest and get around $ 270K worth of the primary digital asset.
Proof-of-Work mining should be prohibited
The two hegemons in the cryptocurrency universe - Bitcoin and Ether - currently rely on the proof-of-work mining consensus. However, this model has caused a lot of controversy lately, as many experts argue that it poses great risks to the environment.
A few days ago, Erik Thedéen - the vice president of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) - joined this club. In his view, EU financial regulators should ban the proof-of-work extraction methodology and encourage the 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 is expected to take place this summer. Following the development, Vitalik Buterin's cryptocurrency protocol will start using the proof-of-stake method and thus become greener.
