The Bitcoin Mining Renaissance: How Upendo is Gamifying Solo Mining

A conversation with Evan Baer, co-founder of Rigly, about turning Bitcoin mining into a community game. Watch here on Nostr .

There’s a new way to mine bitcoin. While industrial mining farms dominate the global hashrate, we’re building a grassroots movement to bring the excitement of mining–and maybe earning some sats–back to the plebs.

The New Mining Reality

"It's frustrating because in the early days of Bitcoin, you could just mine on your computer, and now it’s near-impossible when the network difficulty is in the trillions." - Evan Baer, co-founder of Rigly

What used to be a simple process of turning on your computer and mining bitcoin evolved into a highly competitive industrial operation where an individual bitcoiner mining with a Bitaxe faces odds of roughly 1 in a few million per day.

But here's where things get interesting.

Enter Upendo

With Upendo, we built something unique. It’s a gamified approach to Bitcoin mining that turns individual miners into a coordinated community. There are 2 ways to play the game.

The Solo Alliance

If you have a Bitaxe or other mining rig, come mine with us. We mine 24/7 to try and find a block. If we mine a block, the miner who hashes it earns 1 BTC, and everyone else in our mining alliance gets a fair share based on hashrate contribution. 

The Block Party

Every few weeks, we buy hashrate to increase our odds dramatically for 6 hours at a time. We call it a Block Party.

Our numbers from a previous party tell the story. For example, with 41 people buying hashrate together, we achieved odds of 1 in 400—a dramatic improvement over solo mining's million-to-one chances. We did even better at the end of May, spurred on by whale buys of hashate from The Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas. The May 31 party started two days early with 2.5 EH/s, ultimately reaching a high of 7 EH/s! 

Mining as Collective Action

"It's much like any kind of collective action—the odds get better the more people you can pull into it. As more and more people join, it benefits everyone at the party." - Evan Baer

The block party leverages collective action. This built-in incentive structure means that participants are naturally motivated to invite others to increase hashrate and improve the odds.

When you mine alone, it is nearly impossible to mine a block–mining together, we can win. 

The Charity Angle

"I think we sound greedy if we're just like, ‘yeah, mining,’ and we don't give back to the community." - Heather Larson, Team Rigly

With great power comes great responsibility. Adding a community-minded element, block party miners can choose to share 10% of their reward (if we find a block) with Bitcoin education charities, as we saw the 256 Foundation do in January of 2025. 

A Mining Renaissance

What's happening here reflects the trend we see at Rigly. Solo Satoshi Bitaxes, Nerd Miners, and Apollo Miners (to name a few) are getting people excited about mining again. More importantly, they're driving the conversations about mining centralization, block templates, and the future of Bitcoin's hashrate distribution.

"We're in a Renaissance period. People are learning more about mining now because we might hit a block mining together, but then again, people are finding out about the centralization of mining, too." - Heather Larson

The Bigger Picture

While watching blocks get mined by the same few large pools can be frustrating ("ant-pool, ant-pool, ant-pool, foundry, ant-pool"), the block party concept shows how community coordination can create meaningful alternatives.

"Stay humble and hash sats," as they say. "We're hashing our asses off, and we WILL hit a block—we just don't know when."

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*Join the next block party and follow the community **on Nostr *for updates on auctions and mining events.