On July 5th, we brought together hundreds of solo miners and hashrate buyers to see if we could compete with the big pools.

What Made The July 5 Block Party Unique

During our last party from May 29-31, we scaled up to 7 EH/s. This high was reached due to large hashrate buys that came in while part of the team was in Las Vegas for the Bitcoin Conference. Those hashrate buys on May 29 were so significant, they pushed us past our previous early-start threshold of 250 PH/s. We hit a best difficulty share of 126.29 T, however, we needed 127 T to mine a block on May 31.

Our early start target is 500 PH/s for the next Block Party on July 19.  

At Rigly, we used the month of June post-conference to work on Upendo website improvements and didn’t hold a Block Party. For the July 5th party, we saw a favorable difficulty adjustment (-7.5%).

While we’ve always grown the Block Party exclusively on Nostr, we recently began posting on X from our account there, Trustless Mining. We received a signal boost from Dr. CK, who runs CKPool.

For the July 5 Block Party, we weren’t ready to bring back hashrate auctions, which are a key part of boosting party hashrate. We went into this party with more solo miners than ever, no auctions at all, and only a week to prepare. We added La Crypta of Argentina to our charity leaderboard along with the ability to pick a charity team and automatically donate 10% of your block reward share to the charity of your choice. Those charities are now Bitcoin Arusha, BTC Isla, and La Crypta—with more to come. La Crytpa brought in many new users, just like Dr. CK! 

Technical challenges

Within the first hour of the party, our site crashed due to demand. As the party hashed on, one of our mining farms lost 50% capacity. We had to shut down our direct buy system twice in order to implement fixes. We implemented leaderboard caching mid-party to reinstate direct buys. 

While we didn’t hit a block, it was encouraging to see “smaller” pools hit blocks. Their hashrate exceeded ours, however, they weigh in as smaller alongside the big mining pools like Foundry and AntPool. For example, White Pool found a block with 5.9 EH. Peak Mining hit one with 11.6 EH. An unknown pool grabbed a block with 17.6 EH. This was the first time we held a party and saw anyone other than “the big guys” break in to hit a few blocks. There was also one block that took more than an hour to come through. 

The Party Numbers Offer Proof Of Work:

Here’s how our PoW shakes out:

• Our peak: 855 PH/s peak hashrate with 200+ PH/s peak solo alliance.

• What we were competing against: Pools with many EH finding blocks every 30-60 minutes

• Direct buys on fire: 490 PH/s in direct buys with 256 unique buyers.

• The party extended beyond 6 hours: We delivered 2.5 hours “after party” bonus mining.

The Bigger Picture

Our Block Party highlighted how the Bitcoin mining landscape has changed. Folks who mine Bitcoin from home with solo miners like Solo Satoshis, Apollos, Braiins Mini Miners, and others, are finding community along with new ways to learn about mining firsthand.

Alone, their odds and hashrate are small. But with us, that combined effort becomes 200+ PH/s.

We welcome those who want to hook up to our CKPool between parties. To incentivize that, you’ll get 1 BTC if your solo miner finds a block outside the party. The remainder of shares will be divided amongst solo miners based on hashrate contributed. 

At Rigly, we made it so you don’t even need to do that. Anyone with a wallet full of sats can buy into our Block Party with as few at 17 sats for 1 TH/s. It’s our mission to make mining accessible and simple for all. We want to help decentralize mining while ensuring every step along the way is a win-win for you and the mining farms involved. 

The more hashrate you throw in, the bigger your block reward share will be when we hit a block. We further gamify this by adding bonus hashrate to auctions. We’re also adding charity teams you have the option of donating a 10% portion of your block reward share to, which is a great use case for fundraising. 

Every time we do a party, plebs watch blocks scroll by in the Mempool and it clicks for them that it’s mostly big pools finding blocks. It’s not something you see until you have some skin in the mining game. This has always been our goal at Rigly, to place a spotlight on how centralized Bitcoin mining has become. 

**For the next party: **

1. Know your wallet limits. For example, Fountain varies. Primal has a limit of 1M sats. 

2. We updated the directions to join the Alliance with some FAQs. 

3. Our next early start threshold will be 500 PH/s (it was previously 250 PH/s but we exceeded that on May 29, 2025). 

4. We will continue adding charities so you can give 10% to the team of your choice if we hit a block. Adding: Women of Satoshi Cooperative in Malawi & Bitcoin Ekasi. 

Get in now for the July 19 party with direct buys or hook up your Bitaxe!