SoloLuck

The Moment You Find a Block: Coinbase, the 2% Split, Maturity, and Confirmations

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SoloLuck Blog · 2026-07-01

The instant of the win: a hash below the network target

Every share your miner submits is just a hash — a number. Almost all of them are ordinary. A block is found the moment one of your hashes lands below the network target, a single difficulty threshold the whole Bitcoin network shares. Today the network difficulty is about 133.9 trillion (133,869,853,540,305) at block height 956,079, with the network grinding through roughly 959 EH/s to clear it.

This check has nothing to do with your pool share difficulty. On SoloLuck — a true-solo pool — your shares only feed your stats and vardiff (the engine that auto-tunes your share difficulty to target roughly one submitted share every few seconds). Whether you connect on :3333 (Lite) or :4334 (Pro), the network target is identical for everyone. You don't "build up" toward a block — each hash is an independent lottery ticket, and one of yours just came up a winner.

ckpool builds the block; Bitcoin Core broadcasts it

The instant your miner finds that hash, it submits the winning share to the pool. ckpool (the solo pool software, running in -B true-solo mode) immediately assembles the full block — your winning header plus the transactions it had queued — and hands it to Bitcoin Core, the full node. Core validates the block and broadcasts it to the peer-to-peer network.

From here it's a race: every other node has to hear about your block and accept it before someone finds a competing block at the same height. This is where latency and a well-connected node earn their keep. SoloLuck runs in Asia (Singapore/Jakarta) — about 6 ms from Indonesia versus ~250 ms to a US pool — and pushes fresh work the instant a new block appears. Low latency won't make you more likely to win, but when you do win, fast propagation helps your block stick to the chain.

The coinbase: your full reward, minus 2% only on a win

Every block's first transaction is the coinbase — a special transaction with no inputs that creates brand-new bitcoin and pays it out. This is where your reward appears. The coinbase pays the block subsidy (currently 3.125 BTC) plus all the transaction fees from the transactions included in that block.

Because SoloLuck is non-custodial, that payout goes straight to your own address — the one you used as your stratum username, bc1qexampleaddr….workername. The pool never holds your coins. SoloLuck's only cut is a 2% fee, written as a second coinbase output, and it applies only when a block is actually found. No block, no fee — ever. So on a win you receive roughly 98% of (subsidy + fees) directly: no payout threshold, no balance held by the pool, nothing to wait on for SoloLuck to send it. It's already in your wallet.

Maturity: 100 confirmations (~16.7 hours) before you can spend

Here's the part that surprises first-time block finders: you can't spend it immediately. Coinbase outputs carry a special rule called maturity. A newly created coinbase needs 100 confirmations — 100 blocks mined on top of yours — before the coins become spendable. At roughly 10 minutes per block, that's about 16.7 hours.

Until then your wallet shows the reward as immature: it's genuinely yours and visible on-chain, but it can't be moved yet. This isn't a SoloLuck restriction — it's a Bitcoin consensus rule that applies to every coinbase on the network. It exists so that freshly minted coins can't be spent and then vanish if their block is later reorganized away. The win is thrilling, but it comes with a built-in ~17-hour pause before the coins are truly liquid. Plan around it, and don't panic when your wallet says "immature" — that's exactly what it's supposed to say.

Confirmations and orphan risk: why the first hours matter

A confirmation is simply another block stacked on top of yours. Zero-confirmation — the instant you broadcast — is the most fragile moment: if another miner found a block at the same height and the network ends up preferring their chain, yours can be orphaned, dropped from the main chain and taking your reward with it. This is rare, but it's the real reason maturity exists.

The good news: orphan risk fades fast. After one confirmation your block is much safer, and after a handful it's effectively settled — by the time you reach the 100 confirmations needed for maturity, an orphan is essentially impossible. Good propagation (low latency, a well-connected node) tilts that first risky moment in your favor by getting your block to the rest of the network first. Seen this way, the long maturity wait doubles as a safety buffer: it guarantees your reward is rock-solid before you're allowed to touch it.

It lands on SoloLuck's found-blocks list

Once your block is broadcast and accepted, it shows up in two places: on-chain forever, and on SoloLuck's found-blocks list alongside your address stats. That public record is the social proof of solo mining — a real block, found by a real miner, paid straight to their own wallet.

Now the honest part. Finding a block is a memoryless lottery: your odds depend only on your total hashrate — never on your share difficulty, your port, or how many workers you stack under one address. A single Bitaxe at ~1 TH/s averages about 18,000 years between blocks; one S19 at ~100 TH/s, about 180 years; and SoloLuck's entire combined hashrate today (~28.5 TH/s) averages roughly 640 years for the pool as a whole to hit one. "Average" means exactly that — you could win tomorrow or never, and variance is enormous for small miners. Tiny-miner solo wins are rare but real, and they have happened on the network. SoloLuck can't change those odds; it just makes the moment, if it comes, land cleanly in your own wallet.

FAQ

Why can't I spend my block reward right away?
Coinbase outputs — the transaction that pays a block reward — have a Bitcoin consensus rule called maturity: they need 100 confirmations (about 16.7 hours) before they're spendable. Until then your wallet shows the reward as "immature". It's genuinely yours and on-chain, just temporarily locked.
Does SoloLuck's 2% fee apply if I never find a block?
No. The 2% is taken only from a block you actually find, as a second output in that block's coinbase. If you never find a block, you never pay a fee — there's nothing to take a cut of, and the pool never holds your coins.
Could I find a block and then lose it?
Only in the very first moments, via an orphan — if another miner found a block at the same height and the network prefers their chain. The risk is small and fades within a few confirmations, and it's effectively gone long before the 100-confirmation maturity completes. Good propagation (low latency, a well-connected node) reduces it further.
Does the Pro port (:4334) or stacking more workers improve my chance of finding a block?
No. In solo mining your block odds depend only on your total hashrate. Ports and worker names only change your stats granularity and vardiff, not your luck — match the port to your hashrate for clean stats, not for better odds.
How long until a small miner finds a block?
On average, a very long time: roughly 18,000 years for a 1 TH/s Bitaxe and about 180 years for a 100 TH/s S19, given today's ~133.9-trillion network difficulty. But it's a memoryless lottery — the average is not a countdown, and rare-but-real tiny-miner wins do happen. We never imply it's likely.

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