First Mining Pool Block Found
Slush Pool mines its first block (Block 97,834), proving the viability of cooperative mining.
On December 16, 2010, Slush Pool (the first Bitcoin mining pool) successfully mined its first block, Block 97,834. This was a historic moment for the economics of Bitcoin. Prior to this, mining was a 'winner-take-all' lottery; a miner could run their machine for months and earn nothing if they didn't find a block. Slush Pool changed this by aggregating the power of dozens of small miners and splitting the 50 BTC reward proportionally among them.
The finding of this block validated the Stratum protocol (or its precursor) and the scoring system used to prevent cheating. It proved that a decentralized group of strangers could cooperate to secure the network and share the revenue trustlessly. Within months, pooled mining would become the dominant form of mining, pushing solo mining into obsolescence for all but the largest farms.
While pools introduced a risk of centralization (the pool operator constructs the block template), they were essential for keeping small users involved in the ecosystem during the GPU era. The first pooled block marked the transition of mining from a solitary lottery to a cooperative industry, ensuring more stable income for participants and greater hashrate stability for the network.
Key Sources:
• Blockchain Explorer: Block 97834
• Braiins: History of Slush Pool
• Bitcointalk: Slush confirms first block