Solo Mining — the genesis of innovation
Introduction
At the beginning of 2023, the artist CRYPTOZR created a public chain-level crypto artwork titled Solo Mining, which was also a new work featured in her solo exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London. The piece mainly reflects the potential conflict between individual ideas and collective consensus, as well as how certain ideas break through layers of obstacles and gradually evolve into collective consensus. “Solo” represents the core state of the work, embodying the notion that the beginning of something new is initiated by a unique idea, while “Mining” refers to the proof-of-work mechanism used in Bitcoin mining, symbolizing the initial driving force behind the new idea gaining consensus.
Artist Crypto ZR described it as, “Solo Mining is a work full of excitement, doubt, loneliness, and anticipation. After launching it into space, this sense of loneliness deepened.”
Bitcoin, as a form of silicon-based life, has acquired a self-reinforcing tendency due to humanity’s self-interested game theory, with the global hashrate of mining increasing at an accelerating pace that has become irreversible. Humanity’s mining behavior seems like a summoning ritual, bringing silicon-based life into the real world.
The source code for Solo Mining was created based on an early version of Bitcoin, aiming to restore the spirit of the early crypto world as much as possible. The work modified the genesis block and block generation parameters, creating a public chain exclusive to the artist, called ZRCOIN.
Unlike Bitcoin, which requires global nodes to reach consensus, ZRCOIN’s operating node is not open to the outside world. In this unique cyberspace outside of Earth, the artist is able to run the blockchain according to her own will without considering the validation of the blocks and transactions by external nodes.
The artist first set the genesis text and genesis time and calculated the corresponding genesis block hash value. The average block generation time of ZRCOIN was set to 15 seconds, approximately 40 times faster than Bitcoin’s block generation speed. After the program was compiled, the artist launched the only node of ZRCOIN and initiated Solo Mining.
In the first year after Satoshi Nakamoto released Bitcoin, consensus had not yet been established, and he/she mined independently using only personal computer, producing more than 20,000 blocks and at least one million Bitcoins. With this artwork, the artist connects with Satoshi Nakamoto’s independent will across time and space and pays tribute to all innovators who have engaged or are engaging in their Solo Minings.
In 2024, Solo Mining became part of the Xu Bing Art Satellite Creation Residency Project, with the independent node running on the onboard computer of the SCA-1 art satellite and mining in space. This further deepened the sense of “Solo” in the work: even if it is impossible for a second satellite node to communicate with it, the “Mining” will continue.
Interpretation of the work
Technically, Solo Mining refers to the method where miners use their independently operated hardware to mine, different from pooling computational power in a mining pool and distributing rewards based on hash rate contributions. When a miner successfully mines a block through Solo Mining, they will receive the entire block reward and transaction fees. In November 2010, the first mining pool, Slush Pool, was established. Before that, all mining was done through Solo Mining.
Since Bitcoin began running in January 2009, the hashrate (a metric to measure mining power) remained relatively unchanged for almost a year. At the time, the mainstream home computer CPU was the Intel Core 2, with a hashrate of around 5 to 6 MH/s, which indicated that only Satoshi Nakamoto’s single computer was conducting Solo Mining. It wasn’t until a year later that more home computers joined the mining effort. But back then Bitcoin was still seen as little more than game coins, and the consensus around decentralized currency had yet to be established.
At various stages of Bitcoin’s development, well-known economists, investors, and stockbrokers from traditional finance have dismissed it, much like many early-stage innovations — from the printing press, electricity, and the spinning jenny to the telephone, car, airplane, personal computer, internet, and open-source software. These major innovations were not widely accepted in their early stages, but the utility they brought eventually led people to embrace them. Users moved along the diffusion of innovations curve from early adopters to the mass market.
The text recorded in Bitcoin’s genesis block reflects Satoshi Nakamoto’s attitude towards traditional finance. Bitcoin was not the first attempt to break the barriers of traditional finance; before it, the cypherpunks had tried various solutions like b-money and bit gold. Though these Solo Mining efforts didn’t succeed due to design flaws, they left behind valuable experiences and open-source technologies for future use. One key technology used in Bitcoin’s software is Hashcash, a proof-of-work algorithm for mining. This technology was proposed as early as 1992, initially aimed at combating spam emails.
Returning to the artwork, ZRCOIN’s block generation time and difficulty adjustments are much faster than Bitcoin’s. Through Solo Mining, one can get a sense of Satoshi Nakamoto’s thoughts during the early days of Bitcoin. After Bitcoin’s white paper was published on forums, it received many responses from cypherpunks, gathering a significant number of supporters. In this sense, although Satoshi was the only one Mining, loneliness did not define the entire meaning of Solo.
In a broader sense, Solo Mining is not limited to the crypto space. Innovation is the driving force behind the world’s progress. The internet was born in military institutions in the 1960s, the TCP/IP protocol was standardized in the 1980s, allowing computers to communicate using a universal standard, and by the 1990s, web browsers emerged, leading to the rapid expansion of the internet. Over the past two decades of the 21st century, we have witnessed the internet evolve from the Web 1.0 era of instant messaging and forums to the Web 2.0 era of social networks and media, and into Web 3.0, driven by big data and AI recommendation systems. The internet has redefined traditional fields of news, entertainment, commerce, and even culture, currency, and asset forms. Behind this transformation are countless innovators with independent (Solo) ideas, whose hard work (Mining) has pushed new consensus forward.
Cryptocurrency emerged amidst the digital wave of the internet, and even if Bitcoin had not succeeded at the time, it would inevitably have reappeared in another form. Those who grew up in the internet age will gradually become the world’s managers and operators in the coming decades, and traditional assets may no longer hold the same consensus, while new currencies and assets may expand from the CPU of a home computer to the entire world.
Artist Bio
Liu Jiaying (CryptoZR) began working in Tencent’s International Business Department in 2008. In 2016, she was admitted to the Central Academy of Fine Arts to pursue a master’s degree, during which she focused on using blockchain technology for artistic transformation and continuously explored unique artistic expressions.
- In 2019, the artist introduced the term “Crypto Art” to China.
- In 2020, she received the Outstanding Graduate Creation Award from the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
- In May 2021, she successfully held the world’s first solo exhibition of crypto art at the Guardian Art Center in Beijing.
- In April 2022, she held an exhibition in Venice
- In May 2023, she held a solo exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London.
Her 2022 work Red and Blue was acquired by the Ulsan Art Museum in South Korea. Her exhibited works cover various areas such as public chains, protocol design, smart contracts, tokens, decentralized finance (DeFi), NFTs, and the metaverse.
